Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/233

 But as he came down out of these strange murmuring places with their sense of hiding from the world at large the things that they were occupied in doing, Bucket Lane stuck in his head as a dark little quarry into which he must at the day's end, whatever gorgeous places he had meanwhile encountered, creep. “Creeping” was the only way to get into such a place.

Meanwhile he had put on his best, had blackened his shoes until they shone like little mirrors, had brushed his bowler hat again and again and looked finally like a sailor on shore for a holiday. Seven years in Charing Cross Road had not taken the brown from his cheeks, nor bent his broad shoulders.

At the Mansion House he climbed on to the top of a lumbering omnibus and sailed down through the City. It was now that he discovered how seldom during his seven years he had ventured beyond his little square of country. Below him, on either side of him, black swarms stirred and moved, now forming ahead of him patterns, squares, circles, then suddenly rising it appeared like insects and in a cloud surging against the high stone buildings. All men—men moving with eyes straight ahead of them, bent furiously upon some business, but assembling, retreating, advancing, it seemed, by the order of some giant hand that in the air above them played a game. Imagine that, in some moment of boredom, the Hand were to brush the little pieces aside, were to close the board and put it away, then, with what ignominy and feeble helplessness would these little black figures topple clumsily into heaps.

Down through the midst of them the omnibus, like a man with an impediment in his speech, surrounded by the chatter of cabs and carts and bicycles, stammered its way. The streets opened and shut, shouts came up to them and fell away. Peter's heart danced—London was here at last and the silence of Bennett Square, the dark omens of Bucket Lane and the clamour of the city had together been the key for the unlocking of its gates.

Ludgate Hill caught them into its heart, held them for an instant, and then flung them down in the confusion of Fleet Street.

Here it was at last then with its typewriters and its