By the June of that year the understructure of the Pier was finished, and the rest was advancing with the speed of paper-hanging. The contractors were under time-penalties to be ready for the formal opening on the forthcoming August Bank Holiday. All through the night the sounds of the planking could be heard, and pavilion-parts, lettered and numbered and ready gilded and painted, were rushed along in haste. At the same time the Big Wheel began to resemble the largest circle of the Floral Valley set up on end; it was wonderful to stand beneath it and to gaze up through the intricacy of tie and strut and lattice at the sky. Immense hoardings filled a large part of Pontnewydd Street; by and by they would be taken down again, and the façades of those magnificent new hotels would appear; but Llanyglo would scarcely turn its head to look at them. They were getting used to this now. Besides, they had plenty else to do. The town was so full that they were turning away money into its nearest place of overflow—Porth Neigr.
Then, in the beginning of August, a hundred portents were fulfilled. There began to run into the station train after train, with three or four faces at each window. Doors opened almost before the engines had begun to slow down, and (as if the trains had been veins and somebody had suddenly slit them up, spilling out the life within) the platforms were suddenly black and overrun with people. They carried bags, baskets, hampers, parcels, stools, pillows, babies. Inside the carriages they left crumpled newspapers, trodden sandwiches, bottles, nuts, corks, the heads and tails of shrimps. Their tickets had been taken miles back—no collecting-staff could have coped for a moment with the emptying of those wheeled and windowed veins of impoverished blood. Parents carrying babies stood prudently aside from that first mad rush to the entrance. Many of them had been up since half-past four that morning; they had spent seven hours in the train, twelve and thirteen and fourteen in a carriage, standing, sitting on one another's knees, lying on the rows of feet; and now they made straight for air. Certain trains had been told off for week-end travellers; others were labelled "Special" or "Day Excursion Only." Those who had come by these would have seven hours in Llanyglo, and at the end of that time they would squeeze into the trains again for seven, eight, ten hours more—for on the return journey they must attend the convenience of every other wheel on the line, and a stand of an hour or so at two o'clock in the morning would be but an incident. During that short space in which they would breathe the wonderful Llanyglo air they would eat the meals they had brought with them, or else besiege the inns and eating-houses and tea-rooms and confectioners'-shops. They were the first trippers—spinning operatives, weavers, twisters, warp-dressers, mechanics, asbestos-hands, stokers, clerks, shopkeepers, the grey and unnumbered multitude itself. Some would enjoy themselves, some would vow they enjoyed themselves, and some would declare it "a toil of a pleasure," and would drag about on hot and swollen and weary feet, repeating at intervals, "Niver again—niver as long as I live!" And the lagging children's arms would be almost wrenched off at the shoulders, and some would fall asleep with the sticky paint of the penny toys dyeing their hands, and the platforms would begin to fill up again three hours before the time of departure of the train, for the sake of the chances of corner seats, or indeed of seats at all, and also because, on that horrible arduous day, the station itself would seem almost like a home....
Yes, as the Laceys and Briggses had followed Edward Garden, and those who could not (but would) afford it had followed the Briggses and Laceys, and the Utopia readers these, and the fortnight and ten-days' people these, and all sorts and conditions of people for varying lengths of time these again, so now the unnumbered rest had come.... "The first tripper, and I'm off," the Briggses and the Laceys had said; and which of us is not a Briggs or a Lacey in this? Which of us can say without misgiving that he would have remained in Llanyglo? Could we have endured the sight of our kind in this bulk—or could we have endured to think, either, that if they were not there for that dreadful day they would still be elsewhere? Can we, in the unshared solitude of our hearts, bear to think of this rank and damp and steaming human undergrowth at all? Would the Squire, seeing these, still have thought as much of his books on Church Plate and Brasses, still have defended the integrity of something not for all? Would Minetta Garden have looked on them with a sort of incurious interest as so many "types"? Or would we all, Minetta, the Squire, you, I, have felt meanly and skulkingly relieved when the last tail-light had died away in the night again?
There is neither "Yes" nor "No" to be answered. I may rant of brotherhood and humanity, but you—you may remember that cart jolting without noise over the sandhills, the blue and primrose petals of those butterflies, the amethyst-tufts of wild thyme, the milkwort, the harebells, and then, of a sudden, that V with the sea beyond. I, choosing to shoulder all the responsibility of a world in the making of which I was not consulted, may moisten that human peat with my tears, but you—you, passionate for beauty's sake, may mourn a loveliness deflowered and a simplicity destroyed. It is no virtue in me, no harshness in you. We both are what we are and do what we can. Llanyglo also was what it had become and did what it could. And Llanyglo, after all, had a solace that we lack. It was an inferior one, but better than nothing. Their beach might be littered, their streets made pitiful; their lodging-house keepers might put every loose jug or china dog or ornament away, and replace them again only after these had gone; strange accents might grate upon their ears, different and disliked minds frame the thoughts those accents expressed; yet balm remained. There was not a tripper, no, not the poorest of them, but spent his three, four, or five shillings in the town.
PART FOUR
I
THE BLIND EYE
Drub-drub—drub-drub-drub—drub-drub——