Читать книгу The City of Beautiful Nonsense - E. Temple Thurston - Страница 18

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So strange a matter is this journey to the City of Beautiful Nonsense, that one cannot be blamed if, at times, one takes the wrong turning, finds oneself in the cul de sac of a digression and is compelled to retrace one's steps. It was intended with the best of good faith that the last chapter should be of Kensington Gardens. Quite honestly it began with that purpose. In Kensington Gardens, you will find Romance. What could be more open and above-board than that? Then up starts a ballad-monger out of nowhere and he has to be reckoned with before another step of the way can be taken.

But now we can proceed with our journey to that far city that lies so slumberously on the breast of the Adriatic.

If you live in Fetter Lane, these are your instructions. Walk straight up the Lane into Holborn; take your first turning on the left and continue directly through Oxford Street and Bayswater, until you reach Victoria Gate in the Park railings. This you enter. This is the very portal of the way.

'Twas precisely this direction taken by John Grey on that Friday morning in April, in such a year as history seems reticent to afford.

There is a means of travelling in London, you know, which is not exactly in accordance with the strict principles of honesty, since it is worked on the basis of false pretences; and if a hero of a modern day romance should stoop to employ it as a means of helping him on his journey to the City of Beautiful Nonsense, he must, on two grounds, be excused. The first ground is, that he has but a penny in his pocket, which is needed for the chair in Kensington Gardens; the second, that most human of all excuses which allows that, when Circumstance drives, a man may live by his wits, so long as he takes the risk of the whipping.

This, then, is the method, invented by John Grey in an inspired moment of poverty. There may be hundreds of others catching inspiration from the little street arabs, who have invented it too. Most probably there are, and they may be the very first to exclaim against the flippant treatment of so dishonest a practice. However that may be, out of his own wits John Grey conceived this felonious means of inexpensive travelling--absolutely the most inexpensive I ever knew.

You are going from Holborn to Victoria Gate in the Park railings--very well. You must mount the first 'bus which you see going in the direction you require; grasp the railings--and mount slowly to the top, having first ascertained that the conductor himself is on the roof. By the time you have reached the seat upstairs, if you have done it in a masterly and approved-of fashion, the 'bus has travelled at least twenty yards or so. Then, seeing the conductor, you ask him politely if his 'bus goes in a direction, which you are confident it does not. This, for example, is the conversation that will take place.

"Do you go to Paddington Station?"

"No, sir, we don't; we go straight to Shepherd's Bush."

"But I thought these green 'busses went to Paddington?"

"There are green 'busses as does, but we don't."

"Oh, yes, I think I know now, haven't they a yellow stripe--you have a red one."

"That's right."

You rise slowly, regretfully.

"Oh, then I'm sorry," and you begin slowly to descend the stairs.

"But we go by the Edgware Road, and you can get a 'bus to Paddington there," says the conductor.

For a moment or two longer you stand on the steps and try ineffectually--or effectually, it does not matter which, so long as you take your time over it--to point out to him why you prefer the 'bus which goes direct to its destination, rather than the one which does not; then you descend with something like a hundred yards or so of your journey accomplished. Repeat this ad lib till the journey is fully complete and you will find that you still possess your penny for the chair in Kensington Gardens. The honesty which is amongst thieves compels you--for the sake of the poor horses who have not done you nearly so much harm as that conductor may have done--to mount and descend the vehicle while in motion. This is the unwritten etiquette of the practice. It also possesses that advantage of prohibiting all fat people from its enjoyment, whose weight on the 'bus would perceptibly increase the labour of the willing animals.

Beyond this, there is nothing to be said. The method must be left to your own conscience, with this subtle criticism upon your choice, that if you refuse to have anything to do with it, it will be because you appreciate the delight of condemning those who have. So you stand to gain anyhow by the possession of the secret. For myself, since John Grey told me of it, I do both--strain a sheer delight in a condemnation of those who use it, and use it myself on all those occasions when I have but a penny in my pocket for the chair in Kensington Gardens. Of course, you must pay for the chair.

By this method of progress, then, John Grey reached Kensington Gardens on that Friday morning--that Friday morning in April which was to prove so eventful in the making of this history.

The opening of the month had been too cold to admit of their beginning the trade in tea under the fat mushroom umbrellas--that afternoon tea which you and oh, I don't know how many sparrows and pigeons, all eat to your heart's content for the modest sum of one shilling. But they might have plied their trade that day with some success. There was a warm breath of the Spring in every little puff of wind that danced down the garden paths. The scarlet tulips nodded their heads to it, the daffodils courteseyed, bowed and swayed, catching the infection of the dancer's step. When Spring comes gladsomely to this country of ours, there is no place in the world quite like it. Even Browning, in the heart of the City of Beautiful Nonsense, must write:

"Oh to be in England,

Now that April's there."

From Fetter Lane to the flower-walk in Kensington Gardens, it is a far cry. Ah, you do not know what continents might lie between that wonderful flower-walk and Fetter Lane. Why, there are people in the darksome little alleys which lie off that neighbourhood of Fleet Street, who have never been further west than the Tottenham Court Road! Fetter Lane, the Tottenham Court Road, and the flower-walk in Kensington Gardens! It may be only three miles or so, but just as there is no such thing as time in the ratio of Eternity, so there is no such thing as distance in the ratio of Space. There is only contrast--and suffering. They measure everything.

John made his way first to the flower-walk, just for the sight and the scent of those wonderful growing things that bring their treasures of inimitable colour up out of the secret breast of the dull brown earth. Where, in that clod of earth, which does but soil the hands of him who touches it, does the tulip get its red? Has the Persian Poet guessed the secret? Is it the blood of a buried Cæsar? Enhance it by calling it a mystery--all the great things of the world are that. Wherever the tulip does get its red, it is a brave thing to look at after the dull, smoky bricks of the houses in Fetter Lane.

John stood at the top of the walk and filled his eyes with the varied colours. There were tulips red, tulips yellow, tulips purple and scarlet and mauve. The little hunchback was already there painting them, hugging up close to his easel, taking much more into the heart of him than he probably ever puts down upon his canvas.

He comes every season of every year, that little hunchback, and Spring and Summer, and Autumn and Winter, he paints in Kensington Gardens; and Spring and Summer, and Autumn and Winter, I have no doubt he will continue to paint the Gardens that he loves. And then one day, the Gardens will miss him. He will come no more. The dull brown earth will have taken him as it takes the bulb of a tulip, and perhaps out of his eyes--those eyes which have been drinking in the colours of the flowers for so long, some tulip will one day get its red.

Surely there cannot be libel in such a statement as this? We must all die. The little hunchback, if he reads this, will not approach me for damages, unless he were of the order of Christian Scientists or some such sect, who defy the ravages of Time. And how could he be that? He must have seen the tulips wither.

From the flower-walk, John made his way to the round pond. The ships were sailing. Sturdy mariners with long, thin, bamboo poles were launching their craft in the teeth of the freshening breeze. Ah, those brave ships, and those sturdy men with their young blue eyes, searching across that vast expanse of water for the return of the Daisy or the Kittywake or some such vessel with some such fanciful name!

John took a chair to watch them. A couple of hoary sailors--men who had vast dealings with ships and traffic on deep waters--passed by him with their vessels tucked up under their arms.

"I sail for 'Frisco in five minutes," said one--"for 'Frisco with a cargo of iron."

"What do you use for iron?" asked the other, with the solemnity that such cargo deserved.

"My sister gave me some of her hairpins," was the stern reply.

This, if you like it, is romance! Bound for 'Frisco with a cargo of iron! Think of it! The risk, the peril, the enormous fortune at stake! His sister's hairpins! What a world, what a City of Beautiful Nonsense, if one could only believe like this!

John spread out his short story on his knee, looked at the first lines of it, then closed it with disgust. What was the good of writing stories, when such adventures as these were afoot? Perhaps the little hunchback felt that too. What was the good of painting with red paint on a smooth canvas when God had painted those tulips on the rough brown earth? Why had not he got a sister who would hazard her hairpins in his keeping, so that he might join in the stern business of life and carry cargoes of iron to far-off parts?

He sat idly watching the good ship start for 'Frisco. One push of the thin bamboo pole and it was off--out upon the tossing of the waves. A breath of Spring air blew into its sails, filled them--with the scent of the tulips, perhaps--and bore it off upon its voyage, while the anxious master, with hands shading his eyes, watched it as it dipped over the horizon of all possible interference.

Where was it going to come to shore? The voyage lasted fully five minutes and, at the last moment, a trade wind seizing it--surely it must be a trade wind which seizes a vessel with a cargo such as this--it was born direct for the shore near where John was sitting.

The captain came hurrying along the beach to receive it and, from a seat under the elm trees, a girl came toward him.

"Do you think it's brought them safely?" she asked.

He looked up with a touch of manly pride.

"The Albatross has never heaved her cargo overboard yet," he said with a ringing voice.

So this was the sister. From that wonderful head of hair of hers had come the cargo of the good ship Albatross. She turned that head away to hide a smile of amusement. She looked in John's direction. Their eyes met.

It was the lady of the heavy fur coat who had prayed to St. Joseph in the Sardinia Street chapel.