Was that good or bad? Should I, to begin with, hide in the country, or should I somehow make my way to a big town? A little reflection decided me in favour of the latter. In a large town I would be less conspicuous; and also I had at the back of my mind the idea of finding, perhaps, some central cultural or scientific institution, whose officials might find my story credible. But that would only be a last resort. Anything in the nature of a formal welcome, with the vast publicity it would entail, was what I most wanted to avoid. Such a thing might come later, and very pleasant and comfortable it might be, but so long as it could possibly be continued, my duty to science lay in observing this world and these people while they were not observing me, in studying their life, not in the selected, unreal and self-conscious form in which a modern royalty in our own world is compelled to see it, but as it was lived, by simple people, without a trace of self-consciousness, from day to day.
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.
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.
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