“Keep your mouth shut, youngster,” advised Erb kindly, “until you’ve got used to the fresh air.”
Because both brother and sister felt that in sailing down to New Cross Gate on the top of a tram, and then along by a line less straight and decided to Greenwich they were escaping from worry, they enjoyed the evening’s trip. Going through Hatcham, Louisa declared that one might be in the country, and thereupon, in her own way, declared that they were in the country, that she and her brother had been left a bit of money, which enabled her to give up work at the factory and wear a fresh set of cuffs and collars every day: this sudden stroke of good fortune also permitted Erb to give up his agitating rigmarole (the phrase was Louisa’s own, and Erb accepted it without protest), and they had both settled down somewhere near Epping Forest; Erb, as lord of the manor, with the vicar of the parish church for slave, and Louisa as the generous Lady Bountiful, giving blankets and home-made jam to all those willing to subscribe to Conservative principles. They had a stroll up the hill to Greenwich Park, Lady Louisa forced to go slowly on account of some aristocratic paucity of breath, and Sir Herbert, her brother, playing imaginary games of golf with a stick and some pebbles, and going round the links in eighty-two. At the Chalet near the Blackheath side of the park they had tea, Louisa’s insistence on addressing her brother by a full title astonishing the demure people at other wooden tables, puzzling them greatly, and causing, after departure, acrimonious debate between husbands and wives, some deciding that Erb and Louisa were really superior people and others making reference to escapes from Colney Hatch. Louisa, delighted with the game of fooling people, darted down the hill, with Erb following at a sedate trot; she stopped three parts of the way down, and Erb found her leaning against a tree panting with tears in her eyes. These tears she brushed away, declaring that something had come to her mind that had made her laugh exhaustedly, and the two went on more sedately through the open way at the side of the tall iron gates, happier in each other’s company than in the company of anyone else, and showing this in the defiant way with which some people hide real emotions.
“You’re a bright companion,” said Louisa satirically, as the tram turned with a jerk at the foot of Blackheath Hill. “You ’aven’t made me laugh for quite five minutes.”
“I’ve been thinking, White Face.”
“My face isn’t white,” protested his sister, leaning back to get a reflection of herself in a draper’s window. “I’ve got quite a colour. Besides, why don’t you give up thinking for a bit? You’re always at it. I wonder your brain—or whatever you like to call it—stands the tax you put on it.”
“You’d be a rare old nagger,” said Erb, hooking the tarpaulin covering carefully and affectionately around his sister, “if ever anybody had the misfortune to marry you. It’d be jor, jor, jor, from morning, noon, till night.”
“And if ever you was silly enough to get engaged, Erb. That’s Deptford Station down there,” said Louisa, as the tram stopped for a moment’s rest. “I used to know a boy who’s ticket collector now. He got so confused the other day when I come down here to go to a lecture that he forgot to take my ticket.” She laughed out of sheer exultation at the terrifying powers of her sex. “Take my advice, Erb, don’t you never get married, even if you are asked to. Not even if it was young Lady Frances.”
“Young idiot,” said Erb. “Think I ever bother my head about such matters? I’ve got much more important work in life. This business that I’ve got on now—”
“Our girls are always asking about you,” said Louisa musingly. “It’s all, ‘Is he engaged?’ ‘Does he walk out with anybody?’ ‘Is he a woman ’ater?’ and all such rot.”
Erb looked down at the traffic that was speeding at the side of the leisurely tram and gave himself up for a while to the luxury of feeling that he had been the subject of this discussion. He thought of his young elocution teacher, and wondered whether he had any right to accept this position of a misogynist when he knew so well that it was made by adverse circumstances and the existence of a good-looking youth with an unreliable chin and his hair in waves. The driver below whistled aggrievedly at a high load of hops that was coolly occupying the tram lines; the load of hops seemed to be asleep, and the tram driver had to pull up and whistle again. In a side road banners were stretched across with the word “Welcome,” signifying thus that a church bazaar was being held, where articles could be bought at quite six times the amount of their real value. A landau, drawn by a pair of conceited greys, came out of the side street, with a few children following and crying, “Ipipooray!” the proud horses snorted indignantly to find that they were checked by a bucolic waggon and a plebeian tram. A young woman with a scarlet parasol in the landau looked out over the door rather anxiously.