This Is the End Part 3

His nature was docile, and the 'bus was bound for Chancery Lane, his destination. He mounted the 'bus.

I need hardly tell you that a 'bus that makes deliberate advances to the public is the rarest sight in London. The self-respecting 'bus looks upon the public as dust beneath its tyres. Even a Brigadier-General with red tabs, on his way to Whitehall, looks pathetically humble waggling his cane at a 'bus. All 'bus-drivers have a kingly look; it comes from their proud position. The rest of the world is only worthy to communicate with that n.o.ble race by means of nods and becks and wreathed smiles.

"Chancery Lane, please," said Mr. Russell. "But why did you stop specially for me?"

"I thought your wife hailed me, sir," lied the 'bus-conductor.

Any allusion to his wife mildly annoyed Mr. Russell. "Not my wife," he said. "Merely a friend."

"Oh, I _beg_ your pardon, sir," said the 'bus-conductor, and underlined the "beg" with the ting of her ticket-puncher. She was rather a darling 'bus-conductor, because she was also Jay. She had a short, though not a fat face, soft eyes, and very soft hair cut short to just below the lobes of her ears.

A gentleman with dingy but elaborate boot-uppers hailed and mounted the 'bus. "Shufftesbury Uvvenue?" he asked. He said it that way, of course, because he was a Shakespearian actor. The 'bus-conductor gave him his ticket, and then took her stand upon her platform, more or less unaware that Mr. Russell and the actor, both next to the door and opposite to each other, were looking at her with a pleased look.

Mr. Russell thought for some time, and then he said, "'T's a b'tiful day."

"That's what it is," replied the 'bus-conductor. "I wonder if it's wrong to enjoy being a 'bus-conductor?"

"I shouldn't think so," said Mr. Russell cautiously. "Why?"

The 'bus-conductor waved her hand towards a State hint that shouted in letters six foot high from an opposite wall: "DON'T USE A MOTOR CAR FOR PLEASURE." Mr. Russell read it very carefully and said nothing.

"This is a motor car," observed the 'bus-conductor, glancing at her inaccessible chauffeur. "And as for pleasure ..."

The high houses rose out of the earth like Alps, and the roar in the morning was like large music. She knew she had been an Olympian in a recent life, because she found herself familiar with greater and more gorgeous speed than any 'bus attains, and with the divine discords that high mountains and high cities sing.

"I hope it's not wrong, because I'm going on a motor tour to-morrow,"

said Mr. Russell. "On business of a sort, and yet also on pleasure. On a search, as a matter of fact."

"Oh, any search is pleasure," said the bus-conductor. "Especially if it's an abstract search."

"'Tisn't," said Mr. Russell. "'T's a search for a person."

The 'bus-conductor looked at the sky. "And are Anonyma and Kew going too?" she thought. You must bear in mind that she had deliberately plucked him from the side of Anonyma.

"Perhaps any pleasure is wrong in these days," she said.

"Come, come," said the actor. "Whut's wrung with these days? A German s.h.i.+p sunk yesterday. Thut's pleasurable enough."

The 'bus-conductor turned a cold eye upon him.

"I can cheer, but not laugh over such news as that," she said pompously.

"Doesn't even a German find the sea bitter to drown in? An English woman or a German butcher, isn't it all the same when it comes to a Me, with a throat full of water? Hasn't a German got a Me?"

The actor looked at his boot-uppers. Mr. Russell thought. Shufftesbury Uvvenue arrived soon, and the actor alighted with some relief.

When the 'bus started again, the bus-conductor said, "Don't you think the only way you can get pleasure out of it all is by treating life as a bead upon a string?"

"That's a sufficient way, surely," said Mr. Russell. "If you can truly reach it."

In the Strand he asked, "May I come in this 'bus again?"

"This is a public 'bus," observed the 'bus-conductor.

"This is Monday," said Mr. Russell. "May I gather that during this week your 'bus will be pa.s.sing Kensington Church at half-past eleven every morning?"

The 'bus-conductor did not answer. She went to the top of the 'bus to say, "Fezz plizz."

Mr. Russell thought so furiously that he was only roused by the sound of St. Paul's striking apparently several dozen in his immediate vicinity.

"This is Ludgate Hill. I only paid you as far as Chancery Lane. I owe you another halfpenny," said Mr. Russell.

"A penny," said the 'bus-conductor.

As he disappeared she thought, "There is something remarkable about that man. I wish I hadn't been so prosy. I wonder where and why Anonyma picked him up."

When Mr. Russell came home that evening, he said, "I met--"

"Isn't it wonderful--the people and the things one meets?" said Mrs.

Gustus. "I met to-day a child with nothing but one garment on, rolling like a sparrow in the dust. The one garment, I thought, was the only drawback in the scene. Why can't we get back to simplicity?"

Mr. Russell, on second thoughts, was glad he had been interrupted. He did not feel discouraged, only he decided not to try again. His Hound jumped on to his knee and put a paw into his hand.

"I also persuaded a woman to give up drink," continued Mrs. Gustus. "I put it to her on the ground of simplicity. She was in bed, having been drunk the night before, and I sat on her bed with my hand on hers. I said, 'Dear fellow-woman, there are no essentials in life but bread and water and love. Everything else is a sort of skin-disease which has appeared on the surface of Nature, a disease which we call civilization.'

She cried bitterly, and I gathered that she was lacking in all three essentials. I went and bought her four loaves of bread, on condition she would promise never to touch intoxicants again. I said I would not go away until she promised. She promised. I left her still crying."

Cousin Gustus sighed. He never went about himself, and only saw the world through his wife's eyes. This did not tend to cure his pessimism.

"It is wonderful how one can reach the bed-rock of life in two hours among the poor and simple," said Mrs. Gustus. "By the way, I only put in two hours to-day, because I think I can do better work in two hours twice a week than in four hours once. So I shall come up for the afternoon one day this week from wherever we are by then, and leave you three men prostrate on some sh.o.r.e, with your ears to Nature, like a child's ear to a sh.e.l.l."

She groped for her notebook.

"I must come up now and then too," said Mr. Russell, and poked his Hound secretly in the ribs.

I can't tell you what countless miles away his 'bus-conductor was by now.

A certain fraction of her, to be sure, was sitting in the dark room at Number Eighteen Mabel Place, Brown Borough, with fierce hands pinching the table-cloth, and a hot forehead on the table. All day long the thirst for a secret journey had been in her throat. All day long the elaborate tangle of London had made difficult her way, but she had kicked aside the snare now, and her free feet were on the step of the House by the Sea.

No voices met her at the door, the hall was empty. The firelight pencilled in gold the edges of the wooden figure that presided over the stairs. I think I told you about that figure. I never knew whose it was--a saint's I think, but her virtuous expression was marred by her broken nose, and the finger with which she had once pointed to Heaven was also broken. Her figure was rather stiff, and so were her draperies, which fell in straight folds to her blocklike feet. Her right hand was raised high, and her left was held alertly away from her side and had unseparated fingers. She had seen a great procession of generations pa.s.s her pedestal, but she never saw Jay. Of course not, for Jay was not there. Only a column of thin watching air haunted the House.

There are many ghosts that haunt the House by the Sea. Jay is, of course, one of them, and for this reason she knows more about ghosts than any one I know. Fragments of untold stories are familiar to her. She knows how you may hear in the dark a movement by your bed, and fling out your hand and feel it grasped, and then feel the grasp slide up from your hand to your shoulder, from your shoulder to your throat, from your throat to your heart. She knows how you may go between trees in the moonlight to meet your friend, and find suddenly that some one is keeping pace with you, and how you, mistaking this companion for your friend, may say some silly greeting that only your friend understands. And how your heart drops as you hear the first breath of the reply. She knows how, walking in the mid-day streets of London, you may cross the path of some Great One who had a prior right by many thousand years to walk beside the Thames. These are the ghost stories that never get told. Few people can read them between the lines of press accounts of inquests, or in the dignified announcements of the failure of hearts, on the front page of the _Morning Post_. But Jay knows, because of her intimacy with the House by the Sea. There she meets her fellow-ghosts.

The House, as I told you, has hardly any garden; having the sea, it doesn't need one. But there is a little formal place about twenty paces across, set, as it were, in the heart of the House. A small prim square, bounded on the north, south and east by the House itself, and on the west by the cliff and the sea. There is a stone bal.u.s.trade to divide the garden from s.p.a.ce. In the middle of the square is a stone basin with becalmed water-lilies and of course goldfish. Round the basin the orderly ranks of little clipped box hedges manoeuvre. The untamed elements in the garden are the climbing things, they sing in gold and yellow and orange and red from the walls. The only official way into the garden is a door from the House, a bald door without eyebrows, so to speak, like all the doors and windows in the House. But there is an unofficial way into the garden, and Jay found her Secret Friend there. This is the short cut to the sea. In other words, it is a wriggly ladder, one end of which you attach to a hook in the wall, and the other you throw over the bal.u.s.trade down the cliff to the sea. It is a long way to walk round the House and along the cliff and down to the sea by the path. And just as the house-agents always want to be one minute and a half from the church and the post-office, so we in the Secret House cannot afford to be more than a minute and a half from the sea.

The Secret Friend was there, and he was gazing so earnestly down the cliff that his hair was hanging forward most unbeautifully, and he was rather red in the face. He was looking at a little boat which was on its way towards the foot of the wriggly ladder. A schooner with the low sun climbing down her rigging breathed on the breathing sea not far away. The tide was high.

The oars of the little boat suddenly wavered and were paralysed. One of the rowers made a quick movement with his hand.

"It's the Law," said the Secret Friend, and he tried spasmodically to extinguish the sun with his hand. "It's the Law. The man with the tall and dewy brow."