"At least there is the consolation of refreshment at the inn."
"Not a bad idea," she conceded. "It would be a thing to boast about for the rest of one's life—to have refreshed one's self at the Aldgate Pump."
Both laughed. The omnibus pursued its way with a steady rumble. They had turned out of Piccadilly and passed through Waterloo Place, and soon after through Trafalgar Square into the Strand, where the scene proved much busier. The pavements were thronged; people were pressing forward with an appearance of being very much in earnest. A sprinkling of tourists, clearly self-proclaimed by their holiday air and the style of their attire and grooming, paraded at leisure or gazed into the shop-windows. Here and there a young girl, in a picture frock and a big hat, tripped along daintily, holding her skirt with a touch that suggested Paris, and swinging her little bag from her free hand.
"Actresses going to rehearsal?" hazarded Wyndham, in response to his companion's interrogation.
"How charming they are!" she exclaimed. "And they are most of them frightfully poor. They struggle for years, and then drop out gradually. Fortunately we women have the gift of living intensely for the day. A few weeks' engagement, the guinea or two assured for the time being, and see how we bloom."
"Ah, yes," said Wyndham reflectively; "life for them, as for many others, is pretty much of a game of roulette. They stake their all on the table, fortune fluctuates during a few turns of the wheel, and then—everything is swept away."
"Away, please, with these sad reflections! Why look too searchingly at things? The world is pleasant; why spoil it by examining it? Why turn one's eyes willingly away from the good to see the evil?"
"And at any rate the good is as real as the evil," he agreed.
"We must make things contribute to our happiness while we may. All these crowds of people have no idea that they are there for our entertainment; they do not know, poor things, that we have willed they should be masquerading to please us. They have the delusion they are going about their own affairs, and they see only an ordinary omnibus, full on the roof—that is, if they cared to look at us. To them what more commonplace than a journey on an omnibus from Hyde Park Corner to Aldgate Pump? Yet, to us, what a whimsical universe it is!"
The omnibus rattled along with a not unpleasing vibration. They passed through the heart of the City, swept alongside St. Paul's, and then the humour of country cousins took possession of them. They pretended to be roused to excitement by all these guide-book regions and monuments, affected to be seeing them for the first time and to be recognising them from the engravings. Down Leadenhall Street they clattered at last, and presently to their surprise the conductor's head appeared above the stairway with the announcement of "Aldgate Pump, sir."