第35章

As night drew on, the city became a blaze of light.Splashes of color, green, amber, and ruby, caught the eye at every point, and 'E.R.,' in great cut-crystal letters and backed by flaming gas, was everywhere.The crowds in the streets increased by hundreds of thousands, and though the police sternly put down mafficking, drunkenness and rough play abounded.The tired workers seemed to have gone mad with the relaxation and excitement, and they surged and danced down the streets, men and women, old and young, with linked arms and in long rows, singing, 'I may be crazy, but I love you,'

'Dolly Gray,' and 'The Honeysuckle and the Bee,'- the last rendered something like this:

Yew aw the enny, ennyseckle, Oi em ther bee, Oi'd like ter sip ther enny from those red lips, yew see.

I sat on a bench on the Thames Embankment, looking across the illuminated water.It was approaching midnight, and before me poured the better class of merrymakers, shunning the more riotous streets and returning home.On the bench beside me sat two ragged creatures, a man and a woman, nodding and dozing.The woman sat with her arms clasped across the breast, holding tightly, her body in constant play,- now dropping forward till it seemed its balance would be overcome and she would fall to the pavement; now inclining to the left, sideways, till her head rested on the man's shoulder; and now to the right, stretched and strained, till the pain of it awoke her and she sat bolt upright.Whereupon the dropping forward would begin again and go through its cycle till she was aroused by the strain and stretch.

Every little while, boys and young men stopped long enough to go behind the bench and give vent to sudden and fiendish shouts.This always jerked the man and woman abruptly from their sleep; and at sight of the startled woe upon their faces the crowd would roar with laughter as it flooded past.

This was the most striking thing, the general heartlessness exhibited on every hand.It is a commonplace, the homeless on the benches, the poor miserable folk who may be teased and are harmless.

Fifty thousand people must have passed the bench while I sat upon it, and not one, on such a jubilee occasion as the crowning of the King, felt his heart-strings touched sufficiently to come up and say to the woman: 'Here's sixpence; go and get a bed.' But the women, especially the young women, made witty remarks upon the woman nodding, and invariably set their companions laughing.

To use a Briticism, it was 'cruel'; the corresponding Americanism was more appropriate- it was 'fierce.' I confess I began to grow incensed at this happy crowd streaming by, and to extract a sort of satisfaction from the London statistics which demonstrate that one in every four adults is destined to die on public charity, either in the workhouse, the infirmary, or the asylum.

I talked with the man.He was fifty-four and a broken-down docker.

He could only find odd work when there was a large demand for labor, for the younger and stronger men were preferred when times were slack.

He had spent a week, now, on the benches of the Embankment; but things looked brighter for next week, and he might possibly get in a few days' work and have a bed in some doss-house.He had lived all his life in London, save for five years, when, in 1878, he saw foreign service in India.

Of course he would eat; so would the girl.Days like this were uncommon hard on such as they, though the coppers were so busy poor folk could get in more sleep.I awoke the girl, or woman rather, for she was 'Eyght an' twenty, sir'; and we started for a coffee-house.

''Wot a lot o' work, puttin' up the lights,' said the man at sight of some building superbly illuminated.This was the keynote of his being.All his life he had worked, and the whole objective universe, as well as his own soul, he could express in terms only of work.

'Coronations is some good,' he went on.'They give work to men.'

'But your belly is empty,' I said.

'Yes,' he answered.'I tried, but there wasn't any chawnce.My age is against me.Wot do you work at? Seafarin' chap, eh? I knew it from yer clothes.'

'I know wot you are,' said the girl, 'an Eyetalian.'

'No 'e ayn't,' the man cried heatedly.''E's a Yank, that's wot 'e is.I know.'

'Lord lumme, look a' that,' she exclaimed as we debouched upon the Strand, choked with the roaring, reeling Coronation crowd, the men bellowing and the girls singing in high throaty notes:

Oh! on Coronation D'y, on Coronation D'y, We'll 'ave a spree, a jubilee, an' shout 'Ip, 'ip, 'ooray.

For we'll all be merry, drinkin' whiskey, wine, and sherry, We'll be merry on Coronation D'y.