This Is the End by Stella Benson (best novels of all time .TXT) 📕

empty for me unless I go up to town this morning."

Mr. Russell, although he had tried the effect of all his excuses on his Hound while dressing, was silent.

Mrs. Gustus was never less than half an hour too early for trains. This might account for the excellence of her general information. She had spent a large portion of her life at railway stations, which are, I think, the centre of much wisdom. She and Kew started for the station with mouths burnt by hurried coffee and toast-crumbs still unbrushed on their waistcoats, forty minutes before the train was due. The protests of Kew could be heard almost as far as the station, which was reached by a walk of five minutes.

Cousin Gustus, Mr. Russell, and the convalescent Hound went to lie upon the downs which climbed up straight from the back doorstep of the inn. They were accompanied by a rug, a scarf, a sunshade, an overcoat, the blessings of the landlady, and Cousin Gustus's diary. Nobody ever knew what sort of matter filled Cousin Gustus's diary, nobody ever wanted to know. It gave him grounds for claiming literary tastes, and his literary tastes presumably made him marry a literary wife. So the diary had a certain importance.

They spread out the rug in a little hollow, like a giant's footprint in the downs, and sheep and various small flowers looked over their shoulders.

For the first ten minutes Mr. Russell lay on his back listening to the busy sound of the bees filling their honeybags, and the sheep filling themselves, and Cousin Gustus filling his diary. He watched the rooks travel across the varied country of the sky. He watched a little black and white bird that danced in the air to the tune of its own very high and flippant song. He watched the sun ford a deep and foaming cloud. And all the time he remembered many reasons why it would have been nice to go up to London. Oddly enough, a 'bus-conductor seemed to stand quite apart from these reasons in the back of his mind for several minutes. One would hardly have believed that a bus-conductor could have held her own so long in the mind of a person like Mr. Russell.

And Providence finally ordained that he should feel in his cigarette case and find it empty.

"No cigarettes," said Mr. Russell, after pondering for a moment on this disappointment.

"You smoke too much," said Cousin Gustus. "I once knew a man who over-smoked all his life, and when he got a bullet in his lung in the Zulu War he died, simply as the result of his foolishness. No recuperative power. They said his lungs were simply leather."

"Should have thought that would've been a protection," said Mr. Russell.

"The train is not even signalled yet," said Cousin Gustus. "You would have time to go to the station and tell Kew to get you some cigarettes."

But this was not Providence's intention, as interpreted by Mr. Russell. "D'you know, I half believe I'll go up too," he said. "Would you be lonely?"

"Not in the least," said Cousin Gustus pathetically; "I'm used to being left alone."

As the signals dropped Mr. Russell sprang to his feet and ran down the slope. He had country clothes on, and some thistledown and a sprig or two of clover were sticking to them. He reached the station in time, and fell over a crate of hens. The hens were furious about it, and said so. Mr. Russell said nothing, but he felt hurt when the porter who opened the door for him asked if the hens were his. After the train had started he wished he had had time to tell the porter how impossible it was that a man who owned a crate full of hens should fall over it. And then he thought that would have been neither witty nor convincing. He was one of those lucky people who say so little that they rarely have need to regret what they have said.

The business that dragged him so precipitately from the country must, I suppose, have been very urgent. It chanced that it lay at Ludgate Circus, and it also chanced--not in the least unnaturally--that at half-past eleven he was standing at Kensington Church waiting to be beckoned to once more by a 'bus-conductor. The only unnatural thing was that several 'buses bound for Ludgate Circus passed without winning the patronage of Mr. Russell.

The conductor came. Mr. Russell saw her round face and squared hair appear out of the confusion of the street. He noticed with surprise that he had not borne in mind the pleasing way in which the strap of her hat tilted her already tilted chin.

Jay had been thinking a little about Mr. Russell, not much. She had been wondering who he was. The Family's friends and relations were always much talked of in the Family, and much invited, and much met. Mr. Russell had not been among them when Jay had last known the Family. An idea was in her mind that he might be a private detective, engaged by the Family to seek out their fugitive young relation. Mr. Russell had plainly alluded to a search. Jay had no experience of private detectives, but she thought it quite possible that they might disguise themselves with rather low foreheads, and rather frowning eyes, and shut thin mouths, and shut thin expressions. She hoped that she would see him to-day. An hour ago a young man with a spotty complexion and bulging eyes like a rabbit's had handed her a note with his threepence, asking for a "two-and-a-half" in a lovelorn voice. She handed him back his halfpenny and his unopened note at once, saying, "Your change, sir," in a kind, absent-minded voice. I am afraid an incident like this is always a little exciting, though I admit it ought to be insulting. That suggestive fare made Jay hope more and more that she would meet Mr. Russell to-day. I don't exactly know why, except that sentimentality is an infectious complaint.

Mr. Russell got happily into the 'bus. He made the worst entrance possible. His hat slipped crooked, he left one leg behind on the road, and only retrieved it with the help of the conductor. Jay welcomed him with a nod that was almost a bow, a remnant of her unprofessional past.

"Told you I'd come in this 'bus again," said Mr. Russell, sitting down in the left-hand seat next to the door. I really don't know what would have happened if that seat had been occupied. I suppose Mr. Russell would have sat upon the occupier.

"A good many people like this service," said Jay; "it is considered very convenient. How is your search going?"

"It hasn't begun yet," said Mr. Russell. "We haven't got within three hundred miles of the House we're looking for."

"You know more or less where it is, then?" asked Jay, who sometimes wanted to know this herself.

"I do know, but I don't know how I know, nor what I know."

"How funny that you--an Older and Wiser Man--should feel that sort of knowledge," said Jay. As an afterthought she called him Sir.

The 'bus grew fuller, and only Jay's bell punctured the silence that followed. A lady asked Jay to "set her down at Charing Cross Post Office." "The 'bus stops there automatically, Madam," said Jay, and the lady told her not to be impertinent.

Jay seemed a little subdued after this, and it was only after she had stood for a minute or two on her platform in silence that she said to Mr. Russell, "London seems dead to-day, doesn't it? Not even fog, only a lifeless light. What's the use of daylight in London to-day? You know, I don't live in London."

"No," said Mr. Russell, "where do you live?"

"London," replied Jay. "I mean my heart doesn't live in London mostly. I think it lives very far away in the same sort of place as the place you know without knowing how you know it. The happy shore of God Knows Where must have a great population of hearts. To-day I hate London so that I could tear it into pieces like a rag."

"You ought to start your 'bus on the search for the happy shore," said Mr. Russell. "You'd find the track of my tyres before you. I b'lieve you'd find the place."

"Well, that would be the only perfect Service," said Jay. "But I don't believe the public would use the route much. I would go on and on, and leave all old ruts behind. I would stop for no fares, even the sea should not stop me. I would go on to the horizon to see if that secret look just after sunset really means that the stars are just over the brink. Why do people end themselves on a note of despair? I would choose that way of perpetuating my Perfect Day. The police would see the top seats of the 'bus sticking out at low tide, and the verdict would be, 'Suicide while of even more than usually unsound mind.'"

A 'bus has an unromantic voice. The bass is a snarl, and the treble is made up of a shrill rattle. It was curious how this 'bus managed to retain withal its fantastic atmosphere.

Mr. Russell asked presently, "Why are you a 'bus-conductor?"

"To get some money," replied the conductor baldly. "I want to find out what is the attraction of money. Besides, if one talks such a lot as I do, to do anything--however small--saves one from being utterly futile. When I get to Heaven, the angels won't be able to say, 'Tush tush, you lived on the charity of God.' That's what unearned money is, isn't it? And what's the use of charity?"

"Do you ever get a day off?" asked Mr. Russell.

"Occasionally."

"Will you meet me on the steps of St. Paul's next Sunday at ten?"

"No, because I shall be at work next Sunday."

"Will you meet me the Sunday after that?"

"Yes," said Jay. The Family's theories on the bringing up of girls had evidently been wasted on her.

"What's the use of looking for this girl?" she asked, after a round of duty. "Why not leave her on her happy shore? Do you know, sir, I sympathise enormously with that girl."

"I don't expect you would if you knew her," said Mr. Russell. "She must be quite different from you, by what I hear from her relations. I think she must be an aggressive, suffragetty sort of girl. Girls nowadays seem to find running away from home a sufficient profession."

"You say that because you are so dreadfully much Older and Wiser," said Jay. "Why are you looking for her, then?"

"I'm not," said Mr. Russell. "She is just a trespasser. I'm looking for the place because I know I know it."

"I hope you'll never find it," said Jay crossly. She announced Ludgate Circus in a startling voice, and ended the conversation.

She was tired because she had been up all night among distressed friends in the Brown Borough. There had been a fight in Tann Street. Mrs. O'Rourke had broken the face of little Mrs. Love. Mrs. Love had never fought before; her fists were like lamb cutlets, and she had had a good mother with non-combatant principles. All these things are drawbacks in a Brown Borough argument. But Mrs. Love was a friend of Jay's, and I don't think she had found that a drawback. Feverish discussions with dreadfully impartial policemen, feverish drying