ONDON starts its day as the country starts, and in the early hours of a spring morning, before the scent of the tanning-yards is awake, even Bermondsey seems pure and bright. The loads of vegetables strolling up Old Kent Road, the belated pockets of last year's hops coming, roped sky high, out of the gates of the goods station; the rapid barrows returning from Covent Garden with supplies of flowers and fruit for suburban shops—all these help. At half-past seven comes a transition period. The day's work has begun and it has not begun. Every five minutes increases the haste of those who come out of the giant model dwellings, and up from the tributary roads; girls, as they run, stab at their hats; men, at a trot, endeavour in vain to light their pipes, but continue trying as they go, because matches are cheap and time is priceless. The law of compensation asserts itself: those who were merry last night and stayed out until half-past twelve to sing their way joyously home are, in the morning, thoughtful or surly, whilst those who eluded the attractions of the club or public-house rally them with much enjoyment on their obvious depression.
Erb, after the exaltation of Sunday night's meeting in St. George's Road, where his unreasonable hope to see again the tall, lame girl had been disappointed, but where he had received from one of the leading men in the labour world, grown white-haired in the service, a gracious compliment (“I was like my enthusiastic friend Barnes, here, when I was a lad,” the white-haired man had said), Erb experienced a slight reaction to find that here was the old matter-of-fact world and—Monday morning! An independent set (because of the fact that for so many hours of the day they were their own masters, with a horse and van to take them about, and a boy for slave or despot), on Monday mornings carmen were specially curt of speech and unreliable of temper. In the stables was contentious dispute about horses, about the condition of the empty vans, about tardily arriving boys, about anything, in fact, that lent itself to disapproval. Erb's boy, William Henry, was prompt as ever, but Erb found annoyance in the circumstance that his friend Payne, instead of taking up conversation in regard to an important matter where it had been left the previous afternoon, now treated this as a subject of secondary importance, and as they drove up in the direction of town and the Borough, insisted, with the interruptions that came when traffic parted their vans, on giving to Erb details of a domestic quarrel, in which his wife, Payne said, had been wrong and he had been right; Payne seemed anxious, however, to obtain confirmation of this view from some impartial outsider. The boy on each van left his rope at the back to listen.
“Shall we have time to do that,” asked Erb at St. George's Church, where there was a stop of traffic, “before we start out on our first rounds? I should like to see it under weigh.”
“It isn't,” said Payne from his van, still absorbed with his own affairs, “it isn't as though I was always nagging. I don't seepose I've lifted me 'and at her half-a-dozen times this year, and then only when she's aggravated me.”
“It ought to have an effect if we can get every name signed to it.”
“Question is, has a legally married wife got any right to go throwing a man's rel'tives in his face jest because they don't come to see her? I ain't responsible for my uncle Richard, am I? Very well, then, what's the use of talkin'?”
William Henry, in Erb's van, made a note. Never have an uncle Richard.
“It must be unanimous,” remarked Erb, speaking in fragments, and endeavouring to entice Payne's mind to imperial subjects as the policeman's hand allowed them to go on, “or else it might as well not be done at all. It's a case of all of us sticking together like glue. If it don't have no effect, what I've been thinking of is a deputation to the General Manager.”
“She's not a going to manage me,” returned Payne, catching something of the last sentence. “If I'm treated with proper respect I'm a lamb, but if anyone attempts to lord it over me, I'm simply a roaring lion.”
William Henry, ordered back to the tail of his van, made note number two. Trouble brewing, and, in the case of wholesale discharges, a fair chance of honest lads gaining promotion.
