The Omnibus

== THE OMNIBUS ==
=== by Arthur Quiller-Couch ===
From Noughts and Crosses: Stories, Studies and Sketches. 1905
It was not so much a day as a burning,
fiery furnace. The roar of 's
traffic reverberated under a sky of coppery blue; the pavements threw out waves
of heat, thickened with the reek of restaurants and perfumery shops; and dust
became cinders, and the wearing of flesh a weariness. Streams of sweat ran from
the bellies of 'bus-horses when they halted. Men went up and down with
unbuttoned waistcoats, turned into drinking-bars, and were no sooner inside
than they longed to be out again, and baking in an ampler oven. Other men, who
had given up drinking because of the expense, hung about the fountains in 
and listened to the splash of running water. It was the time when is supposed to be
empty; and when those who remain in town feel there is not room for a soul
more.
We were eleven inside the omnibus when it
pulled up at , so that legally
there was room for just one more. I had travelled enough in omnibuses to know
my fellow-passengers by heart-- a governess with some sheets of music in her
satchel; a minor actress going to rehearsal; a woman carrying her incurable
complaint for the hundredth time to the hospital; three middle-aged city
clerks; a couple of reporters with weak eyes and low collars; an old
loose-cheeked woman exhaling patchouli; a bald-headed man with hairy hands, a violent
breast-pin, and the indescribable air of a matrimonial agent. Not a word
passed. We were all failures in life, and could not trouble to dissemble it, in
that heat. Moreover, we were used to each other, as types if not as persons,
and had lost curiosity. So we sat listless, dispirited, drawing difficult
breath and staring vacuously. The hope we shared in common--that nobody would
claim the vacant seat--was too obvious to be discussed.
But at 
the twelfth passenger got in--a boy with a stick, and a bundle in a blue
handkerchief. He was about thirteen; bound for the docks, we could tell at a
glance, to sail on his first voyage; and, by the way he looked about, we could
tell as easily that in stepping outside Charing Cross Station he had set foot
on 
stones for the first time. When we pulled up, he was standing on the opposite
pavement with dazed eyes like a hare's, wondering at the new world--the
hansoms, the yelling news-boys, the flower-women, the crowd pushing him this
way and that, the ugly shop-fronts, the hurry and stink and din of it all.
Then, hailing our 'bus, he started to run across--faltered--almost dropped his
bundle--was snatched by our conductor out of the path of a running hansom, and
hauled on board. His eyelids were pink and swollen; but he was not crying,
though he wanted to. Instead, he took a great gulp, as he pushed between our
knees to his seat, and tried to look brave as a lion.
The passengers turned an incurious,
half-resentful stare upon him, and then repented. I think that more than one of
us wanted to speak, but dared not.
It was not so much the little chap's look.
But to the knot of his sea-kit there was tied a bunch of cottage-flowers--sweet
williams, boy's love, love-lies-bleeding, a few common striped carnations, and
a rose or two--and the sight and smell of them in that frowsy 'bus were like
tears on thirsty eyelids. We had ceased to pity what we were, but the heart is
far withered that cannot pity what it has been; and it made us shudder to look
on the young face set towards the road along which we had travelled so far.
Only the minor actress dropped a tear; but she was used to expressing emotion,
and half-way down the the 'bus stopped
and she left us.
The woman with an incurable complaint
touched me on the knee.
"Speak to him," she whispered.
But the whisper did not reach, for I was
two hundred miles away, and occupied in starting off to school for the first
time. I had two shillings in my pocket; and at the first town where the coach
baited I was to exchange these for a coco-nut and a clasp-knife. Also, I was to
break the knife in opening the nut, and the nut, when opened, would be sour. A
sense of coming evil, therefore, possessed me.
"Why don't you speak to him?"
The boy glanced up, not catching her words,
but suspicious: then frowned and looked defiant.
"Ah," she went on in the same
whisper, "it's only the young that I pity. Sometimes, sir--for my illness
keeps me much awake--I lie at night in my lodgings and listen, and the whole of
 seems
filled with the sound of children's feet running. Even by day I can hear them,
at the back of the uproar--"
The matrimonial agent grunted and rose, as
we halted at the top of . I saw him slip a couple of half-crowns
into the conductor's hand: and he whispered something, jerking his head back
towards the interior of the 'bus. The boy was brushing his eyes, under pretence
of putting his cap forward; and by the time he stole a look around to see if
anyone had observed, we had started again. I pretended to stare out of the
window, but marked the wet smear on his hand as he laid it on his lap.
In less than a minute it was my turn to
alight. Unlike the matrimonial agent, I had not two half-crowns to spare; but,
catching the sick woman's eye, forced up courage to nod and say--
"Good luck, my boy."
"Good day, sir."
A moment after I was in the hot crowd,
whose roar rolled east and west for miles. And at the back of it, as the woman
had said, in street and side-lane and blind-alley, I heard the footfall of a multitude
more terrible than an army with banners, the ceaseless pelting feet of
children--of Whittingtons turning and turning again.
Category:Quiller-Couch
Category:Nought & Crosses