How far from Le Bourget, left only two hours before, far from the Abattoirs and the Flanders road bordered, as if by geraniums, by slaughtered pigs and petrol pumps, towards the stony desert of the aerodrome where the huge aeroplanes sweating green oil sleep in their reinforced concrete stables. Where was the stream of pretty painted work girls, so lissom and exotic, leaving their work in Paris like Seville cigarette makers? Here one fell right into the arms of the Anglican Church. Sunday: Evensong: the 5th chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. The country offered to the traveller not the dismal countenance of a railway station, but a green countryside, with new-washed cheeks. Let us make a chimney descent into the heart of the English home. In the clubs the diners were allowed, for that evening only, to dine in day clothes. On the Sabbath, that weekly day of catalepsy, the basements of the houses were all shut up and the servants who lived there were at church; the Salvationists sang in a South Eastern Railway tunnel in which the smoke obstinately lingered; the Israelites, who are opposed to the silk hat habit, were returning home from the symphony concerts; the playing fields were empty, under a curse; not a wisp of smoke came from the chimney pots, for everyone was having cold supper. The only places open were the fire stations and the public houses reeking of leather and malt.
Lewis was driven to London to a hotel in the Strand. His room looked out over the Thames, which at this point traces a soft silvery curve towards the Houses of Parliament. He opened his bag and took out the files in it. He stared for a moment at the one on which was written "San Lucido" in blue pencil. He shrugged his shoulders wretchedly.
[IX]
THE next morning at about midday Lewis walked up Fleet Street towards Old Jewry where the Apostolatos Bank had its London branch.
Fleet Street bows down and sags beneath the weight of the railway bridge and of bundles of newspapers and then, as though shot up by a spring board, leaps up Ludgate Hill towards St. Paul's Cathedral, scales it and rises to the copper pink sky. On the hoardings are views of Wales with blue skies as deceptive as the Celts themselves; on another poster a gentleman in a quilted dressing gown is smoking by his fireside surrounded by children playing amongst his legs like lion cubs, pictures which appear to excite the natural laziness of the natives.
Lewis skirted St. Paul's to where the unfrosted windows of the wholesale merchants begin, and came at last to the old Jewry and the Apostolatos Bank, an Adam house, ivory white outside and painted inside in sea green and dark brown in Dickensian shades, with the legend on the door in black letters:—
APOSTOLATOS BANK
FOREIGN BANKERS, FOUNDED IN 1846.
FREIGHTAGE, ADVANCES ON MERCHANDISE.
BRANCHES AT ATHENS, SALONICA,
ARGOS, KALAMATA, CORFU, NAUPLIA,
LARISSA, VOLO, CANEA, MYTILENE.
Special shipments to the Piraus.
These Greek names, torn from coasts so tormented that Reclus compares them to the convolutions of the human brain, exiled to the north like the metopes of the Parthenon, sparkled here with such Oriental fire that Lewis blinked. They recalled to him warmth, sweet lemons and the Mediterranean so full of salt that it makes marks like fruit stains on one's clothes.
The ground floor contained wooden counters and ledgers like antiphonals as tall as the book-keeper himself, bound in whole ox skins and studded with brass nails. This entrance was like the window of Lock's hat shop, and bore witness to the venerable age of a firm which, though foreign, claimed respect as a right by virtue of its good old English methods and neatly a century of commercial probity.
In the upper stories everything had been altered; polished brass plates replaced the black painted letters, and the old folios had been dethroned by American filing devices. Worked by a one-armed sergeant plastered with medals, modern lifts sucked the customers upwards to the roof. On the third floor Lewis passed through the general office, where an army of youths with heads shining like patent leather boots worked behind polished bars, and was introduced into the private offices of the Bank: a thick pile carpet, frosted windows and enamelled spittoons with the encouraging inscription: "Make sure of your aim"; in the anteroom those outward signs of English commercial standing: silk hats and umbrellas.