"Waterloo!" yelled a dozen voices, and the bewildered Pippa heard a stamping of feet, a rattling of trucks, the din of two porters in a semi-religious discussion concerning the right of way, the din being aided and abetted by a young gentleman possessed of a voice which had recently broken, who howled, alternately in a deep bass and a shrill treble (giving the general effect of a Swiss yodeler running amok), that, in exchange for coin of the realm, he was willing to barter light refreshment—very light refreshment indeed—in the shape of small biscuits or popular magazines. A slim girl porter, far too weak for her task, dragged a trunk from the van for a vigorous indispensable, who stood by with sixpence in his hand. A sailor kissed a rosy-cheeked woman with moist heartiness…. A taxi-driver, outside the station, took a sudden and violent dislike to a horse-cabby, casting loud aspersions on the latter's respectability, and hinting at a doubtful pedigree; to which the other replied simultaneously, his remarks being quite unintelligible, but apparently giving himself the greatest personal satisfaction. Down the road a street-piano burst forth into "The Lost Chord."
"Pippa," said the airman, opening the door, "we have arrived. The Prince with the Golden Key welcomes you to London."
"Mon Dieu," said that young person, "what a noise!"
IX
It was nearing the middle of the afternoon when the airman succeeded, after some difficulty, in piloting his little companion across Piccadilly Circus to Regent Street. It is something to be noticed in that most cosmopolitan of districts, but more than one turned to watch the solemn officer of the formidable stride and the French girl whose wealth of hair and length of dress (barely revealing her ankles) made her seem a vignette from some past century novel.
It had been, for her, a day of wonders.
From her lonely little world, peopled with make-believe inhabitants, she had been transported through the air to the center of reality. London, the "Bagdad of the West," huge, monotonous, garish, beautiful—what term is there in language that could not be applied to that great gathering of human souls?—London sprawled before her gaze in a yellow sunlight which played such tricks with its tired buildings that age-old stone looked bright and cheerful, and the very dust seemed like the coating of frost when a thaw succeeds a freezing night.
Before her eyes the pageant of passions passed in endless array. Poverty and hypocrisy rubbed shoulders with ostentation, greed, and lust. Streets, crowded with a suffocating similarity of stodgy dwelling-places, gave way to parks, fragrant with the atmosphere of romance. Vice stalked unashamed through the thronged streets, and dull, tired faces, leaving monotony in their trail, passed their next of kin without a glance, those to whom discouragement had come as some incurable disease. Sinister, sensuous eyes looked into hers, and children pure in mind as snowflakes laughed as they walked beside their nurses.
For the sun was in the heavens—and the same warmth that brings the beauty of a narcissus into being gives life to the noisome, crawling things that feed on decay.
London's costume drama was at its height; uniformed men and girls paraded in their thousands. There were loose-limbed Colonials, slouchily-smart British Tommies, amazingly serious Americans; bus-girls, land-girls, girls on motor-cycles, and girls driving ambulances; graceful French officers, swarthy Italians, impassive Japanese, and ruddy-faced British sailors seeking a day's diversion from the sentry-go of the sea.