THE COLLECTED WORKS OF GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ concert was over they did not return directly to town, as Lydia wished to walk awhile in the gardens. In consequence, when they left Sydenham, they got into a Waterloo train, and so had to change at Clapham Junction. It was a fine summer evening, and Alice, though she thought that it became ladies to hide themselves from the public in waiting-rooms at railway stations, did not attempt to dissuade Lydia from walking to and fro at an unfrequented end of the platform, which terminated in a bank covered with flowers.

      “To my mind,” said Lydia, “Clapham Junction is one of the prettiest places about London.”

      “Indeed!” said Alice, a little maliciously. “I thought that all artistic people looked on junctions and railway lines as blots on the landscape.”

      “Some of them do,” said Lydia; “but they are not the artists of our generation; and those who take up their cry are no better than parrots. If every holiday recollection of my youth, every escape from town to country, be associated with the railway, I must feel towards it otherwise than did my father, upon whose middle age it came as a monstrous iron innovation. The locomotive is one of the wonders of modern childhood. Children crowd upon a bridge to see the train pass beneath. Little boys strut along the streets puffing and whistling in imitation of the engine. All that romance, silly as it looks, becomes sacred in afterlife. Besides, when it is not underground in a foul London tunnel, a train is a beautiful thing. Its pure, white fleece of steam harmonizes with every variety of landscape. And its sound! Have you ever stood on a sea-coast skirted by a railway, and listened as the train came into hearing in the far distance? At first it can hardly be distinguished from the noise of the sea; then you recognize it by its vibration; one moment smothered in a deep cutting, and the next sent echoing from some hillside. Sometimes it runs smoothly for many minutes, and then breaks suddenly into a rhythmic clatter, always changing in distance and intensity. When it comes near, you should get into a tunnel, and stand there while it passes. I did that once, and it was like the last page of an overture by Beethoven — thunderingly impetuous. I cannot conceive how any person can hope to disparage a train by comparing it with a stage-coach; and I know something of stage-coaches — or, at least, of diligences. Their effect on the men employed about them ought to decide the superiority of steam without further argument. I have never observed an engine-driver who did not seem an exceptionally intelligent mechanic, while the very writers and artists who have preserved the memory of the coaching days for us do not appear to have taken coachmen seriously, or to have regarded them as responsible and civilized men. Abuse of the railway from a pastoral point of view is obsolete. There are millions of grown persons in England to whom the far sound of the train is as pleasantly suggestive as the piping of a blackbird. Again — is not that Lord Worthington getting out of the train? Yes, that one, at the third platform from this. He—” She stopped.

      Alice looked, but could see neither Lord Worthington nor the cause of a subtle but perceptible change in Lydia, who said, quickly,

      “He is probably coming to our train. Come to the waiting-room.” She walked swiftly along the platform as she spoke. Alice hurried after her; and they had but just got into the room, the door of which was close to the staircase which gave access to the platform, when a coarse din of men’s voices showed that a noisy party were ascending the steps. Presently a man emerged reeling, and at once began to execute a drunken dance, and to sing as well as his condition and musical faculty allowed. Lydia stood near the window of the room and watched in silence. Alice, following her example, recognized the drunken dancer as Mellish. He was followed by three men gayly attired and highly elated, but comparatively sober. After them came Cashel Byron, showily dressed in a velveteen coat, and tightly-fitting fawn-colored pantaloons that displayed the muscles of his legs. He also seemed quite sober; but he was dishevelled, and his left eye blinked frequently, the adjacent brow and cheek being much yellower than his natural complexion, which appeared to advantage on the right side of his face. Walking steadily to Mellish, who was now asking each of the bystanders in turn to come and drink at his expense, he seized him by the collar and sternly bade him cease making a fool of himself. Mellish tried to embrace him.

      “My own boy,” he exclaimed, affectionately. “He’s my little nonpareil. Cashel Byron again’ the world at catch weight. Bob Mellish’s money—”

      “You sot,” said Cashel, rolling him about until he was giddy as well as drunk, and then forcing him to sit down on a bench; “one would think you never saw a mill or won a bet in your life before.”

      “Steady, Byron,” said one of the others. “Here’s his lordship.” Lord Worthington was coming up the stairs, apparently the most excited of the party.

      “Fine man!” he cried, patting Cashel on the shoulder. “Splendid man! You have won a monkey for me to-day; and you shall have your share of it, old boy.”

      “I trained him,” said Mellish, staggering forward again. “I trained him. You know me, my lord. You know Bob Mellish. A word with your lordship in c-confidence. You ask who knows how to make the beef go and the muscle come. You ask — I ask your lordship’s pard’n. What’ll your lordship take?”

      “Take care, for Heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Lord Worthington, clutching at him as he reeled backward towards the line. “Don’t you see the train?”

      “I know,” said Mellish, gravely. “I am all right; no man more so. I am Bob Mellish. You ask—”

      “Here. Come out of this,” said one of the party, a powerful man with a scarred face and crushed nose, grasping Mellish and thrusting him into the train. “Y’ll ‘ave to clap a beefsteak on that ogle of yours, where you napped the Dutchman’s auctioneer, Byron. It’s got more yellow paint on it than y’ll like to show in church tomorrow.”

      At this they all gave a roar of laughter, and entered a third-class carriage. Lydia and Alice had but just time to take their places in the train before it started.

      “Eeally, I must say,” said Alice, “that if those were Mr. Cashel Byron’s and Lord Worthington’s associates, their tastes are very peculiar.”

      “Yes,” said Lydia, almost grimly. “I am a fair linguist; but I did not understand a single sentence of their conversation, though I heard it all distinctly.”

      “They were not gentlemen,” said Alice. “You say that no one can tell by a person’s appearance whether he is a gentleman or not; but surely you cannot think that those men are Lord Worthington’s equals.”

      “I do not,” said Lydia. “They are ruffians; and Cashel Byron is the most unmistakable ruffian of them all.”

      Alice, awestruck, did not venture to speak again until they left the train at Victoria. There was a crowd outside the carriage in which Cashel had travelled. They hastened past; but Lydia asked a guard whether anything was the matter. He replied that a drunken man, alighting from the train, had fallen down upon the rails, and that, had the carriage been in motion, he would have been killed. Lydia thanked her informant, and, as she turned from him, found Bashville standing before her, touching his hat. She had given him no instructions to attend. However, she accepted his presence as a matter of course, and inquired whether the carriage was there.

      “No, madam,” replied Bashville. “The coachman had no orders.”

      “Quite right. A hansom, if you please.” When he was gone she said to Alice, “Did you tell Bashville to meet us?”

      “Oh, DEAR, no,” said Alice. “I should not think of doing such a thing.”

      “Strange! However, he knows his duties better than I do; so I have no doubt that he has acted properly. He has been waiting all the afternoon, I suppose, poor fellow.”

      “He СКАЧАТЬ