“Woven out of the whiskers of missionaries,” replied Murrel. “A pleasant thought. And I suppose your work is going on the stump for all these workers.”
“Their conditions are infamous,” said Braintree, “especially the poor chaps working on some of the dyes and paints and things, which are simple damned poisons and pestilences. They’ve scarcely got any unions worth talking about and their hours are much too long.”
“It’s long hours that knock a man out most,” agreed Murrel. “Nobody gets enough leisure or fun in this world, do they, Bill?”
Braintree was perhaps secretly a little flattered by his friend always calling him Jack; but he was wholly unable to understand why, in an excess of intimacy, he should address him as Bill. He was about to ask a question, when a grunt out of the darkness in front of him suddenly reminded him of somebody whose very existence he was bound to admit he had completely forgotten. It would appear that William was the Christian name of the driver of the omnibus; and that Douglas Murrel was in the habit of addressing him by it. The answering grunt of the person called Bill was sufficient to indicate that he entirely agreed that the hours of proletarian employment were much too long.
“Well, you’re all right, Bill,” said Murrel. “You’re one of the lucky ones, especially to-night. Old Charley comes on at the Dragon, don’t he?”
“Why, yes,” said the driver in slow and luxuriantly scornful tones. “’E comes on at the Dragon, but . . .” Leaving the matter there, rather as if coming on at the Dragon were something which even the limited faculties of old Charley might be expected to manage, but that beyond that there was very little ground for consolation.
“He comes on at the Dragon and we come off at the Dragon,” continued Murrel, “so you can come and have one on me. Show you bear no malice for Golliwog. But I swear I only told you to back him for a place.”
“Never mind, Sir. Never you mind about that,” observed the benevolent Bill, in a glow of Christian forgiveness. “Never mind having a bit on; and if you lose your bit– why, there you are.”
“You are indeed,” said Murrel. “And here we are at the Dragon; I suppose somebody’s got to go in and fetch old Charley out.”
With the worthy object of thus accelerating the service of public vehicles, Murrel appeared suddenly to fall off the top of the omnibus. He fell on his feet, however, having in fact descended by turning a sort of cartwheel in the air on the pivot of a single foothold. He then shouldered his way into the lighted and noisy bar of the Green Dragon, with so resolute a movement that the other two men naturally followed him. The omnibus driver, whose full name was William Pond, followed indeed with no pretence of reluctance. The democratic John Braintree followed with a faint reluctance and some affectation of carelessness. He was neither a prohibitionist nor a prig; and would have drunk beer at any wayside inn on a walking tour naturally enough. But the Green Dragon stood on the outskirts of an industrial town; and the place they entered was not a bar-parlour or a lounge or any of the despicable little cubicles called Private Bars. It was the Public Bar or open and honest place of drinking for the poor. And the moment Braintree stepped across its threshold, he knew he was confronted with something new; with something that he had never touched or tasted or seen or smelt before in all his fifteen years of tub-thumping. There was a good deal to be smelt as well as seen; and much that he did not feel inclined to touch, far less to taste. The place was very hot and densely crowded and full of a deafening clatter of people all talking at once. Many of them did not seem to mind much whether the others were listening or talking at the same time. A great part of the talk was totally unintelligible to him, though evidently full of emphatic expressions; as if a crowd were swearing in Dutch or Portuguese. Every now and then in the stream of rather ugly and unintelligible words one word would occur and an authoritative voice from behind the counter would say: “Now then–now then,” and the expression would be tacitly withdrawn. Murrel had gone up to the counter, nodding to various people and rapped on it with a few coppers asking for four of something.