I was now walking under some trees, beyond which I had discerned a low wall, on the other side of which I suspected there was a more or less deserted country road. All at once I stopped, listening to an approaching sound which fell familiarly on my ears—the sound, it seemed to me, of a motor bus.
I had not to wait long. It was a motor bus all right, and in a few seconds I saw its red-enamel exterior flashing through the green of the trees. It was going at a good speed along the road the other side of the wall, and in a few more seconds its uproar had diminished again, and it had vanished. But a sight and sound again so familiar had left my heart lighter.
I had noticed, also, that it was a double-decker, with an open top—nothing in the nature of a ‘char-a-banc,’ or ‘motor coach.’ From this I thought it justifiable to conclude that this place could not be very far from a fair-sized town, and I had already half-decided to jump on to the next bus that came along.
I reached the wall, climbed over it without difficulty, and found myself on the road. To my right this stretched away into practically unspoiled country scenery, to my left it led down a hill to what I took to be a village of some sort. And in the distance beyond the village I could see all the evidences of a straggling urban population. It looked like the beginnings of a great town, and of course it was—since Tlobwen Yebba, on whose site the school is built, is in point of fact only ten miles from the centre of Nwotsemaht itself, bearing the same sort of geographical relation to this, the capital and centre of Moribundia, as, let us say, Harrow bears to our own metropolis.7
I walked in a sort of dream down towards the village, and if I encountered anyone on the way I do not remember it. Nor am I able to remember the faces or appearances of anyone I saw when I got there, though I must have passed at least a dozen people. This may seem absurd, but I suppose my still bewildered thoughts were somehow occupied elsewhere, drinking in other impressions. In fact, I can remember very little about the village itself, except that it was æsthetically disappointing, any sign of antiquity it may once have displayed being completely shoved out of the way by ugly shop-fronts of recent date and by the exigencies of the motor car—petrol stations, hoardings, signs, cement roads, and, in what I took to be its centre, a ‘roundabout’ in place of what may have once been a market-place.
It was on the other side of this ‘roundabout’ that I saw all that interested me at the moment —a sign on a lamp-post saying ‘Buses Stop Here.’ And on a framed sign underneath this was written: ‘Service to Nwotsemaht,’ and a list of times and stopping places. These meant very little to me, as the ticking of my watch had not survived a journey by Asteradio (the feeble little hands pointed still to a quarter past ten of a Chandos Street morning!), and I did not yet know what the names of the places might signify. I judged, however, by the light in the sky, that in Moribundia it must be about a quarter-past five of a summer’s afternoon. The question as to what time it now was in our own world, or indeed what remote era in the past or future of our world, I leave to Crowmarsh and his friends.
I was able to observe, too, that the service was a very frequent one, and almost before I was ready for it—that is, before I had fully made up my mind that the best course open to me was to take a bus into the town, another bus came along.
At the same moment two other people who had apparently been waiting for the same bus, appeared, seemingly from nowhere, as they do on these occasions, and one of them politely stood aside to let me get on first. As I was fearful of making myself in any way conspicuous, my mind was made up for me, and I quickly mounted the step. I took a seat inside and the bus restarted.
Notes
7. Somewhat confusingly, Hamilton runs two schools together here: Tlobwen Yebba (Newbolt Abbey), ‘on whose site the school is built’, is said to be only 10 miles from Nwotsemaht (‘Thamestown’), like Harrow in relation to London. But Clifton College (see Note 4) is just outside Bristol.
CHAPTER IV
Still afraid that in some way my appearance must be incongruous and likely to give me away, I did not have the courage to look at my travelling companions for the first few minutes (though I was aware that the bus was about a quarter full), and instead averted my face by looking out of the window.
We were soon in the midst of narrow streets with buildings and shops each side, and there was no more doubt in my mind that the country had been left behind for good, and that we were heading for the centre of the metropolis, however distant that might be.
I may say that I saw enough in the streets, even in those few minutes looking out of the window, to fill me with the greatest interest, and every kind of surmise and bewilderment, but I shall be describing the streets, and the Moribundian scene generally, later. My attention was soon diverted, in any case, by some decidedly droll sounds coming from the top of the bus—the sound of heavy feet stamping about on the wooden floor, and a voice raised in tones of the extremest joviality.
My first impression was that there must be a drunken man up there, and I stole a furtive glance at my neighbours to see if they were hearing what I was hearing and showing any signs of alarm or amusement. They, however (quite an ordinary bunch of people, such as you might see in any bus in England), sat stolidly in their seats and did not seem to be aware of anything out of the ordinary taking place. As the noise upstairs seemed to be growing louder and louder, this struck me as very strange.
I next looked round for the conductor, to see whether he was doing anything about it. But there was no conductor present. Was he upstairs, trying to persuade the drunkard to get off the bus?
Imagine my surprise when, a few moments later, I heard the same heavy footsteps, carrying the owner of the same jovial voice, coming down the steps of the bus, and I realized that these raucous good spirits, which I had presumed to be those of a drunken man, proceeded from the conductor himself!
I do not know how I am going to convey to the reader the overwhelming personality of this bus-conductor, nor the effect he had upon me, but as he resembled, in almost every particular, every bus-conductor I met in Moribundia (and every bus-driver, and taxi-driver, and engine-driver, too, if it comes to that), I must certainly make the attempt.
To tell my present reader that he was the living image of the greater part of the drawings of a well-known Moribundian black-and-white artist—one Treb Samoht—and also those of another artist, Ecurb Rehtafsnriab8—will, of course, be to tell him nothing. He has never seen the work of these artists, and unless he makes the same journey that I made, he never will. All the same, I only wish that I could have brought some specimens home with me, for the written word is powerless to depict adequately the grotesque appearance, yet stupendous demeanour, of those engaged to manage public vehicles in Moribundia.
I can speak of corpulence, and I can speak of joviality: I can speak of red noses, and I can speak of enormous moustaches. But how am I going to make credible or real, to anyone in our workaday world, the seven-chinned fatness of face, the wild and rolling obesity, of the man I now saw—the glorious heartiness, as of a dozen Cheeryble brothers9 rolled into one, of his manner; the raw, flaming redness of his enlarged nose (I actually fancied I could perceive rays bursting from it which lit the air around it), or the tempestuous cascade which was his moustache!
As, with an outward appearance such as his, no sort of behaviour in which he could indulge could really be regarded as strange, I realized at once that he was not drunk, though it would have been fairly obvious to a medical man that he was not averse to the bottle in his hours off duty. But as soon as I began to listen to his speech, and I may say he hardly ever left off talking, I had further cause for wonderment.
I should say that his language was quite as grotesque as his appearance, if not more so. Characterized, as it was, by incessant, deliberate, and, as it were, vindictive distortions and vulgarizations of the language and its correct accent, I had never heard the like of it. The fact that, in the town of Nwotsemaht, all bus-conductors, all bus-drivers, all taxi-drivers, all en
gine-drivers, in fact all those employed in the more menial side of transport, talked in the same way, I did not then know. Nor did I know that it was a recognized thing—that such workers were, by the ordinance of some rigid Moribundian law, chosen only from the ranks of a class of beings known as Yenkcocs, who could think and enunciate in this way and in no other. Eventually I got hardened to it, but to one used to the smooth, quiet, reasonable accent of an average London bus-conductor (possibly a little coloured by the locality in which he has been born, but nothing more), it was at first positively agonizing to hear.
As this Moribundian Yenkcoc language is like nothing that has ever been heard on earth, just as the exterior of the Yenkcoc bus-conductor was like nothing that has ever been seen on earth, it is not easy for me to give a satisfactory impression of it here.
If I gave a list of the obscure and extraordinary expressions—such as: ‘Blimey,’ ‘Crikey,’ ‘Cripes,’ ‘Bloomin’,’ ‘Blinkin’,’ ‘Ruddy,’ ‘S’welp-me,’ ‘Coo,’ ‘Struth,’ ‘Strike me pink,’ ‘Yerdontsay,’ ‘Gawd,’ ‘Lorblessyer,’ ‘Lorluverduck,’ ‘Arfamo,’ ‘Lumme,’ etc.—without uttering one, or several of which expressions, the Moribundian Yenkcoc is hardly able to utter a sentence—I might go on for ever. But these expressions play only a minor role in the hideousness and uncouthness of the general effect—which is obtained for the most part by wilful, you might say fervent, misplacing of aspirates, and the equally impassioned substitution of a wrong vowel-sound for the correct one whenever possible. However, I will continue my narrative, and the reader will be able to judge for himself.
It so happened that shortly after the conductor’s coming inside to collect the fares, the driver, who had, so I thought, been driving very fast, was forced suddenly to swerve in order to avoid a cart. Although there was no damage done an old lady sitting opposite me (who belonged to a short-sighted, school-mistressy, prim, fussy type, of which I later saw a good deal in Moribundia, and learned to identify as the Retsnips type) was considerably shaken in her seat, and she ventured to say to the conductor that she thought the driver was going too fast.
“Horlright! Horlright! hold gal!” said, or rather yelled, this extraordinary conductor. “Keep yer ’air on! Keep yer ’air on! That is,” he added, so that everybody could hear, but giving the old lady a salacious and knowing wink the like of which I had never seen, “that is, if it is yer ’air, lidy, an’ haint not nobody helses!”
And at this he went off into fits of the wildest laughter, which shook his whole body as it might have been shaken by an electrical machine. When he had recovered from this he spoke again.
“Looks like my mate,” he said, beaming all over, “wants to get back to ’is missiz!” And at this he went to one of the windows, thrust his head out in the most inconsequent way, and hailed the driver.
“Wotcher, Alf!” he cried, to gain his attention.
“Wotcher, Bert!” cried the driver to signify he had heard.
I have here to confess that I have not the slightest idea of the meaning of this expression ‘Wotcher’—but no Yenkcoc in Moribundia ever greets a friend, when he is any distance away from him, without making use of it. I may also fittingly remark, at this point, that in obedience to some caste tradition, which I do not understand, the only Christian names which the parents of Yenkcocs are able to bestow upon their male children, are ‘Bert,’ ‘Alf,’ ‘Bill’ or ‘Fred.’ ‘Fred,’ actually, is rare. The surname of the Moribundian Yenkcoc is almost equally restricted: if he is not called Muggins he is called Juggins, and if he is not called Juggins he is called Buggins, and if he is not called Buggins he is called Sproggins.10 Again, you might occasionally come across a rarer form, such as Higgins (or Wiggins), but the termination ‘gins’ is rigidly adhered to, and it is never preceded by more than one syllable.
“Curb that there blinkin’ himpetuous temperryment o’ yourn, mate!” the conductor now yelled to the driver. “There’s an ole gal in ’ere wot’s gettin’ ’er false teeth rattled!”
“Horlright! Horlright!” yelled back the driver, whom I could see through the glass at the front, and whose corpulence, geniality, and liberality of moustache were on an even larger scale than that attained by his friend (while his bulbous nose burned with so fierce a ray, that, for an area of an inch or so around it, it definitely set up a sort of glaring white light which prevented me from seeing the scenery beyond it). “Horlways willin’ to hoblige a young leddy, lorblessyer!”
I do not know what the reader will have made of this dialogue up to now, or whether he will have felt in any degree what I felt very strongly at the time—surprise, not unmixed with chivalrous resentment, at what appeared to be gratuitous insolence brought to bear against a defenceless middle-aged lady. She had, in fact, been insulted outright four times in succession. She had first of all been told ‘to keep her hair on,’ which implied that she was in such an absurd state of excitement that it might fly off. It had then been suggested that it was not really her hair at all—that she was wearing a wig. After that, it had been definitely stated that her teeth were false (which no doubt they were, but there was no need to call attention to the matter). Finally the driver had called her a ‘young lady’ in a sarcastic manner deliberately adopted to make clear the fact that she was no longer young.
It was on the tip of my tongue, in fact, to call these men to order. But I desisted for two reasons. Firstly, as I explained before, I dreaded making myself conspicuous. Secondly, I saw that the faces of those around me, so far from reflecting the resentment and anger rising in my own breast, bore instead a look of complacent approbation (not unmixed, perhaps, with a faintly bored look, as of people who had witnessed the same sort of scene many times before) which was very difficult to understand.
It was fortunate enough, as it happened, that I did desist from making any protest, as I do not know what might have happened to me had I done otherwise—something, possibly, very serious indeed.
The fact is that this sort of behaviour on the part of this class of person is, in Moribundia, looked upon with the greatest possible favour. Indeed, known as Yenkcoc Ruomuh—which means, roughly translated, ‘the high spirits of the Nwotsemaht labouring man’—it is regarded with semi-religious respect. To deride, to criticize, or to doubt the existence of what is called eht Gniliafnu Doog Ruomuh fo eht Gnikrow Sessalc (‘the incessantly gay temperament of the lower orders’) is to call into question something which Moribundia holds dearest to its heart; and anyone so foolish, or, as I nearly was, so ignorant as to do so, might easily incur danger to his life. For Moribundians are in certain respects ruthless, as we shall see.
This may seem fantastic to people of our world—I mean to pay such profound, almost fetishistic homage to a type represented by this absurd bus-conductor—but I am not so sure that it is so. It must be remembered that this class is unlike anything we know in England. To make any comparison between the stupendous creature I have just described and the thin, quiet, sallow-faced, usually slightly dyspeptic and surly person in blue we encounter in an average London bus, would be quite absurd. Moribundia realizes, quite reasonably, I think, that this class, with its peculiar temperament, forms one of the most precious elements of its general well-being. For without these high spirits, this incessant and illogical cheerfulness, this delicious gaiety under irksome and difficult tasks, this taking of everything as a joke, it is doubtful whether any of the vaster Moribundian undertakings—such as, for instance, protracted wars (in which, alas, Moribundians are still, against all their dearest wishes and instincts, compelled to engage)—could be undertaken at all. Moribundia appreciates the fact, knows, if you like, which side its bread is buttered. And if, in this magnificent realization of the magnificent ideal of contentment, of constant day-to-day humour, the poor uneducated fellows occasionally take a liberty with their superiors, it is cheerfully and gratefully overlooked, if not definitely loved for its own sake. I may be wrong, but I should personally like to see Moribundian conductors on our own buse
s.
However, my view was not adjusted at that time, and my surprises had only just begun.
The conductor was now standing over the middle-aged lady, waiting to take her fare. This was a long time coming, as she did nothing but fumble in the depths of her bag, and seemed quite unable to produce the coin she wanted. At the same time she muttered irritably and fussily to herself, and nodded her head in a silly way.
The truth was that I was beginning to lose my sympathy for this lady. Of course, had I known that, in acting thus, she was merely making manifest the unalterable characteristics of every member of the Retsnips class, I might have made some allowance for her. As it was, her extreme plainness filled me with gloom, and her manners irritated me more and more.
She did eventually produce a coin—a florin. (The coinage of Moribundia so closely resembles our own that I can speak of florins, half-crowns, sixpences, etc.11) Now as she was only taking a short journey, for which the fare was only one penny, this florin was, of course, far in excess of the fare, and it was necessary for the conductor to give her a lot of change. As this was inconvenient for him, she had the grace to apologize to him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “that I haven’t a copper, conductor.”
“Bless yer ’art, lidy—don’t take hon so!” replied the conductor, at the same time cautiously biting the coin to see that it was a genuine one. “You’re goaner ’ave twenty-three in arfamo!”
Impromptu in Moribundia Page 5
