In the same carriage with her was a lady of uncertain age, whom Mrs. Rosamond quickly guessed to be unmarried and an “organiser”—one of those assertive, independent, “heel-less” women of the genus plantigrade, who know everything and want no assistance from anybody. Falling into conversation, Lilian Rosamond remarked that she hoped to see the King’s procession to the Abbey, a seat having long ago been secured for her, and that she had been told she would have to go a very long distance from the West End and might have to start by the first train on the Twopenny Tube to the Bank, and that then by another Tube she somehow would get to the Borough High Street (where her “stand” was situated) by way of the “Elephant and Castle.”
This led to the subject of West Kensington, her destination, and how she proposed reaching it from Paddington. “Why,” said the plantigrade lady, “what on earth made your husband tell you to take a cab? It is two miles off at least, and you are sure to be over-charged. Never mind what he said. Men are always extravagant in these matters. Besides, you can think for yourself; you are a woman, not a baby. Now, I’ll tell you what to do. If your sister is not at the station, book your luggage—you say you have not got much with you—to be sent on by the railway parcel van, cross the road to the Praed Street District Railway Station, get out at Notting Hill Gate, cross the road there to the Tube station, and for twopence you will be at Shepherd’s Bush in a few minutes.”
This suggestion seemed to Mrs. Rosamond good and attractive, but she bravely resisted the allurements of a journey by an unfamiliar route; and, recalling her husband and his injunction, after waiting a quarter of an hour at Euston and finding that no one came for her, she allowed herself to be stowed away by an attentive and sympathetic porter into a stale, straw-smelling four-wheeler, and arrived safely at No. 28, when cabby promptly asked, and received, half a crown—a moderate eighteenpence more than his legitimate fare; but cabmen, like everybody else, must live somehow!
The longest day recorded in the almanac dawned clear and fair, and Mrs. Rosamond, rising at an unearthly early hour, started for Islington, where she had promised to breakfast with a relative—an unusual kind of feat to attempt, but easy of accomplishment by leaving Shepherd’s Bush very early for the Bank of England, where, as it was explained to her in an off-hand, businesslike manner by her sister’s husband, all she had to do was to hit the right subway, book afresh at the Bank Station of the City and South London Electric Railway, and “in a jiffy, as easy as A B C” (so he put it) she would find herself at the “Angel,” Islington, and be with her aunt in time for the coffee and rolls.
Mrs. Rosamond was delighted at the prospect, and no happier woman than she stood outside the Tube’s terminus that bright summer morning.
The booking-office was full of people—of the working class, thought fair Mrs. Rosamond, who, observing that each person paid the sum of three-halfpence through the glass partition that screened the clerks from too close contact with the public, tendered that modest sum like the others, without specifying her destination. But though plainly, she was too daintily dressed and too self-evidently a lady to escape notice, and was rather surprised at being asked if she wanted a workman’s ticket. “Oh no!” she hastily exclaimed. “I am only going to the Bank, and then to Islington on a visit.” “Well, then, your fare is twopence.” And she received in return a small slip of paper and not the familiar paste-board ticket covered with undecipherable letters and figures.
Following the crowd, Mrs. Rosamond dropped the document into a sloping box fixed at the side of the gate and presided over by a railway official, the process suggesting to her lively imagination the method by which votes are recorded at a School Board election.
Wide open stood the door of a gigantic lift, the like of which she had never seen, which quickly filled with a compact mass of some fifty men and a sprinkling of women. There were upholstered benches at the sides; and a civil young artisan offered her his seat, but Lilian preferred to stand and look about her. The electro-lighted apartment was not æsthetic, and the unsightly advertisements, and notices warning travellers against smoking, spitting, or standing too near the doors, did not add to its beauty; and when the telescopic gates were clashed together and fastened, the whole thing reminded Mrs. Rosamond of a great cage full of specimens of the British Homo Sapiens packed for conveyance and exhibition to inhabitants of other regions.
Suddenly, gently, and noiselessly the lift began to descend, and it seemed as if it would never stop. But stop it did, at a depth of seventy feet, which might have been seven hundred so far as Mrs. Rosamond’s sensations were concerned. Once again the iron gates clashed, and the wild animals—I mean the passengers—streamed forth, our fair traveller following, to the platform.
Was she dreaming? Had she, like Alice in Wonderland, suddenly become diminutive, and was she waiting for a well-groomed little white rabbit, with gold watch and chain, to emerge from what resembled a burrow at the end of the station? It was so very small. Everything was on a reduced scale, the standing-room was a mere strip of planking, the tube like a pea-shooter. Surely it would not take in the train! However, it was deliciously cool and light, and the tiles that lined the station were, as she found by touching them with her gloved hands, perfectly free from smuts.