And he was happy. The monotony was a relief. It never ceased to be a source of pride to him to keep the paint and brass of his car gleaming and his engine sweet and in tune. Always it was a delight to him at night, when the traffic was abated, to let the throttle open and send the car spinning and humming over the shining streets. If he lost interest in his fares, he never weakened in his joy in the streets with their color and activity, as changing as the sky or as the water in the river, their music swelling through the day, to almost every hour its individual harmony, a music growing and falling with the seasons: vigor and hope in October; in the winter a humorous desperation out of which grew miraculously the spring, and that again was lost in the maddening rout of June and then the slackness and the excited pleasure-hunting of the summer months when the genius of the city flees before the horde of aliens and visitors who come to gape and peer and see the sights. He was happy, and most of all he loved his independence, to be free of organization of any kind. Company? The car was company. He and it worked together. Here was no uncertainty, no fumbling. The day’s work was marked out and must be well done. There was always satisfaction in it and never compromise, never the sense of being driven on by some obscure and undirected energy other than his own that had so often overcome him in Thrigsby. And because his mind and body were engaged in the discipline of skilled work, his intellect, his imagination began to grow, to reach out, to desire to use their powers upon all that he observed and thought and felt. A little joy grew in him slowly and brought him at first to a dreaming, wistful mood wherein desires expanded of which he did not begin to be conscious until spring airs stirred in London.
Through the winter the habit of labor and his pride in it brought him slowly nearer to understanding of Ann Pidduck and her absorption in fun. He began to share her pleasure in relaxation. She taught him to dance, and they attended shilling balls together and she communicated to him her Cockney pleasure in the streets, the prowling in the lighted thoroughfares, the making of chance acquaintances, the full gusto of broad jests. He introduced her to Kilner and tried to make her include him in their intimacy and their jaunts; but she seemed to be scared of the artist, and when René appeared with him would make excuses of other engagements.
Then there were evenings of talk with Kilner, René hardly listening to him but rejoicing in the vigor of his words. He was painting in his spare time and on Saturdays and Sundays, and through his pictures and the painter’s enthusiasm for things seen René learned to use his eyes. That was a slow process, too. Often he saw beautiful things and creatures that so moved him that he lost sight of them, and dwelt only in the emotion they had roused, falsifying his vision. He would constantly be overcome in that way when he tried to describe anything he had seen to his friend, who would then turn upon him and call him a bloody liar, and a sentimentalist, and a filthy spitter upon the world’s beauty, a crapulous cheat, trying to steal a winged joy and turn it into a selfish pleasure; and much more that was beyond René except that he would feel ashamed but also invigorated by being so fiercely flung back into humility. Kilner took him to the National Gallery and very carefully explained the difference between a real picture and a fraud. There were, according to him, very few real pictures. He talked René into a very pretty bewilderment from which his hours with Ann were a welcome relief. There everything was what it seemed, everybody was taken (more or less) at his or her own valuation; there was fun to be extracted from everything and everybody, if only you approached them good-humoredly enough. And if you failed and did not find the expected fun—Oh, well, try elsewhere. There are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.
And then one morning Spring came to London. The black trees were powdered with green; the air was magical; the car was filled with a blithe new energy; the light gave the street and the things and people in them form and definiteness. René was up and out very early that morning to take a family to one of the stations. Three children were going away to the country. They beamed at him as though he were already a part of their coming delights. He laughed at them, and they said he was a nice funny driver, and was he coming to the country, too? Uncle George had got a new calf which they would like him to see. When he had unloaded the happy party at the station—it was that at which he had arrived the year before—he caught sight of the hill at Highgate, like a green mountain towering above the long gray streets. He turned northward and sped out over the hills and far away. Here the trees were less advanced than in London, but their green was peeping, and in a field were ewes and lambs. He stopped his engine and stood by the fence and gazed at them. Two of the lambs were playing, running races backward and forward. In the sky there were little clouds, and they too seemed to be playing. He remembered words of Kilner’s:
“Real seeing is through, not with, your eyes. Then you recognize that all things visible are within you as well as without. Then the spirit in you sees the spirit shining in all things, and it is only the spirit that can really see.”
And away up north was a black city, dark and hard and remorseless, from which he had escaped. The memory of it clung to him now and filled him with a stabbing terror that, though it could not rob him of his joy, could yet bring him to a new discontent, a hungry and almost angry desire.
Back then he went to the city, and all day long busily plied his trade. To-day he closely observed all things. The wonder of the early morning was gone. He hated those who hired him, the insolent women and busy, indifferent men, for it seemed to him that they had destroyed it. Unconsciously he contrasted these people, who went so insensibly about their habitual stale employments, with the happy children going to the country.
He was engaged to seek amusement with Ann that night. She was for the Pictures, but he persuaded her to go on the top of a bus to Kew.
“But they’ve got the Miserables at the Pictures,” she said, “and they say it’s It.”
“Look at the sky, my dear,” he protested.