She looked nervously at the luggage rack above her head as if she expected to find the Almighty in hiding there. Edwin followed the direction of her glance and read: “_This rack is provided for light articles only it must not be used for heavy luggage_.” He wondered inconsequently, whether the stop, which was missing, should come before or after the word “only.”
“You must cheer up, dearie,” said the black woman soothingly. “While there’s life . . .”
Edwin wished she would shut up. He was sorry that she had ever spoken, and yet he couldn’t quite suppress a desire to be further informed on certain technical details which this authority had at her finger-tips. “Is it a painful death?” he asked slowly, wiping away the last of his tears.
“Painful? . . . Well . . . not to say painful. Not as painful as some. Most of mine passed away in their sleep like. And they look so peaceful and happy. It’s a great consolation to their friends. Just like a doll, they look. That’s better. You mustn’t cry. That’s a brave boy. Upon my word, even though I’m used to it, it’s quite upset me talking to you.” She gave a little laugh and dived once more for the bottle of spirits. “This wouldn’t be no use to you,” she said, as she took a swig. Edwin shook his head.
“Every woman has a mother’s feelings. And I know what they go through. I understand. I do. Now, that’s right. Cheer up and be a good lad. Hope for the best. That’s what I tell them. . . .”
“This rack is intended for light articles only. It must not be used for heavy luggage. This rack is intended for light articles. Only it must not be used for heavy luggage. While there’s life there’s hope. While there’s life there’s hope. While there’s life there’s hope.”
So, in the pitiful whirl of Edwin’s brain, foolish words re-echoed, and in the end the empty phrase seemed to attach itself to the regular beat of the train’s rhythm as the wheels rolled over the joints in the rails. Mesmerised by the formula he only dimly realised that they were now roaring, under a sky far paler and less blue, towards the huge pall of yellowish atmosphere beneath which the black country sweltered.
Soon the prim small gardens told that they were touching the tentacles of a great town. A patch of desert country, scarred with forgotten workings in which water reflected the pale sky, and scattered with heaps of slag. A pair of conical blast furnaces standing side by side and towering above the black factory sheds like temples of some savage religion, as indeed they were. Gloomy canal wharfs, fronting on smoke-blackened walls where leaky steampipes, bound with asbestos, hissed. The exhaust of a single small engine, puffing regular jets of dazzling white steam, seen but not heard. A canal barge painted in garish colours, swimming in yellow water, foul with alkali refuse. A disused factory with a tall chimney on which the words Harris and Co., Brass Founders, was painted in vertical letters which the mesmeric eye must read. Another mile of black desert, pools, and slag heaps, and ragged children flying kites. Everywhere a vast debris of rusty iron, old wheels, corroded boilers, tubes writhen and tangled as if they had been struck by lightning. An asphalt school-yard on a slope, with a tall, gothic school and children screaming their lungs out, but silent to Edwin’s ears. Endless mean streets of dusky brick houses with roofs of purple slate and blue brick footpaths. Dust and an acrid smell as of smoking pit heaps. More houses, and above them, misty, and almost beautiful, the high clock tower of the Art Gallery. A thunderous tunnel. . . . The clamour of the wheels swelled to an uproar. “While there’s life there’s hope. While there’s life there’s hope.” Under the gloom of the great glass roof the train emerged.