As I waited for my friend long trains came rumbling in under a canopy of smoke that hung about the grim iron rafters of this labyrinth. Fifteen minutes ago these trains had been spinning along through the green fields and across the shady lanes of what looked like "Merrie England," although now shaved down and trimmed to intense respectability of cultivation. The heavens darkened and the air thickened as they came close to their journey's end, until they slow down as if gropingly finding their way into the cavernous gateway of the great dingy city.
What a strange conglomeration of people was waiting on each platform! There was a train leaving to catch the steamer for New York, there was a line of people waiting to take tickets for a close-by station, there was a line of soldiers waiting to be entrained; an American girl was standing on an automatic machine, and getting the railway porter to translate from stones into pounds how much she weighed after her visit to Europe. A couple of Oriental servants seemed to have lost themselves in the labyrinthine station, and were wandering round with Oriental indifference. Porters, with hands and faces and uniforms toned down to the universal greyness of things, trundled their hand-lorries to the monotonous calling of "B' your leave, b' your leave"; and variegated specimens of humanity were looking around after their luggage as one might imagine disembodied souls looking for their bodies in the Valley of Jehoshaphat on the Last Day. There were not a few touches of cosmopolitanism suggestive of that gathering.
My Oriental alighted from the train. As his Japanese servant was quite capable of looking after his luggage and bringing it to his hotel, his master was left free to come right on with me and exercise his industrious curiosity—a curiosity that seemed never to be surprised at anything he saw, but took everything as a matter of course. He was a man of the world in his own estimation. Nevertheless, what an important part of it he had not yet seen! Was it not a great epoch in his life, this arrival of his in London?
"This is our North Gate."
"Ah, yes, Hou-Men," he said. "A very dark day, is it not?"
We drove away in a cab under that sepulchral prison-like portico; we had the glass down, it was raining so hard, and even he, whose Westernisation was principally confined to New York, noticed the absurdly asphyxiating arrangement of the London cab, which hermetically seals its frame-bound occupants. The New Yorkers got their idea of the cab from us, but they have improved upon the window by having it slanting outwards, so that, while protecting people from the rain, it admits air. For Londoners there is no alternative between spatteration and suffocation. In the New York cabs they can have shelter and fresh air.
It was not an inspiriting entrance through these first streets outside Euston into London. The pavement of Melton Street was little better than that of Pekin, and from each side those dreary-looking small hotels blinked out of their closed windows on the muddy street as if wondering when a God-forsaken guest would come and occupy them. And then on through grimy Gower Street, looking like the empty bottom of a drained canal.
It's not very inspiriting, this entrance into London from this North Gate of ours.
The people we passed there were not an interesting lot; they seemed all to belong to the two-storeyed houses. They were two-storeyed people, apparently keeping themselves moderately busy making a moderate amount of money, but hampered in the money-making by the mud and rain. We passed a little square carpeted with fresh grass, but the trees on the other side were vague in mist, and the square and its vegetation gave the suggestion of a tank with seaweeds in it. It was a day for studying men and women by their umbrellas and boots. Boots tell confessions for the most Low Church Protestants, and the umbrellas above them generally corroborate the sins of the boots.
My Oriental friend was gazing out gravely.