From the great, throbbing city a babel of voices rose, like the sound from a gigantic mart; hurrying, restless vehicles worried their way through the maze of traffic; Youth with its carelessness of years elbowed Age, waiting with weakening tread the call of the Reaper to whom all men's lives are but sands that run their little course. Over the whole city brooded the Past.
Take all the comedies of the centuries; gather the tragedies of history; piece them together with the fancies of a madman's brain—and what could they offer in the play of human emotions that would compare with one hour of London's life?
They had gone a little way down Regent Street when an exclamation of delight escaped from the girl.
"Tiens!" She caught the airman by the arm. "Papa Joffre!"
A one-legged man with outstretched cap was seated on the pavement, and beside him were five colored drawings vaguely suggesting men of the times.
"But he is wonderful," cried the girl. "See—it is Papa Joffre himself! Monsieur, you will give him a little present?"
The airman presented the art-exhibitor with half-a-crown, receiving a gin-and-watery blessing in return, as they strolled on their way.
"She's the fust one," muttered the cripple, preparing to close business for the day, "as 'as recognoized that there dial of Juff's this last four month. It were a rotten drawink and no mistike. Blime! I'll give that cove this 'arf-crown to draw me a picter of this 'ere General Fush as what is getting hisself talked abaht."
He saw a shadow on the pavement and held out his cap. A Jewish rabbi, with sallow brow and spiritual face, passed without a glance, his flowing robes oddly reminiscent of the Levite in that Past to which the age of London is mere immaturity.
The wanderers turned into Pall Mall, and, traversing it, reached the Strand, where the meeting of human currents forms a whirlpool. Threading their way with difficulty, he felt the restraining hand on his arm, as he had done two hundred times that day. The girl had stopped opposite a hollow-eyed old woman offering violets, from her seat on a box, to the thousands who cared as little for her flowers as for her.