CHAPTER
XI.
HOW GEORGE, ONCE UPON A TIME, GOT UP
EARLY IN THE MORNING. - GEORGE,
HARRIS, AND MONTMORENCY DO NOT LIKE
THE LOOK OF THE COLD WATER. - HEROISM
AND DETERMINATION ON THE PART OF J. -
GEORGE AND HIS SHIRT: STORY WITH A
MORAL. - HARRIS AS COOK. - HISTORICAL
RETROSPECT, SPECIALLY INSERTED FOR
THE USE OF SCHOOLS.
I WOKE at six the next morning; and found
George awake too. We both
turned round, and tried to go to sleep
again, but we could not. Had
there been any particular reason why we
should not have gone to sleep
again, but have got up and dressed then
and there, we should have dropped
off while we were looking at our watches,
and have slept till ten. As
there was no earthly necessity for our
getting up under another two hours
at the very least, and our getting up at
that time was an utter
absurdity, it was only in keeping with
the natural cussedness of things
in general that we should both feel that
lying down for five minutes more
would be death to us.
George said that the same kind of thing,
only worse, had happened to him
some eighteen months ago, when he was
lodging by himself in the house of
a certain Mrs. Gippings. He said his
watch went wrong one evening, and
stopped at a quarter-past eight. He did
not know this at the time
because, for some reason or other, he
forgot to wind it up when he went
to bed (an unusual occurrence with him),
and hung it up over his pillow
without ever looking at the thing.
It was in the winter when this happened,
very near the shortest day, and
a week of fog into the bargain, so the
fact that it was still very dark
when George woke in the morning was no
guide to him as to the time. He
reached up, and hauled down his watch. It
was a quarter-past eight.
"Angels and ministers of grace
defend us!" exclaimed George; "and here
have I got to be in the City by nine. Why
didn't somebody call me? Oh,
this is a shame!" And he flung the
watch down, and sprang out of bed,
and had a cold bath, and washed himself,
and dressed himself, and shaved
himself in cold water because there was
not time to wait for the hot, and
then rushed and had another look at the
watch.
Whether the shaking it had received in
being thrown down on the bed had
started it, or how it was, George could
not say, but certain it was that
from a quarter-past eight it had begun to
go, and now pointed to twenty
minutes to nine.
George snatched it up, and rushed
downstairs. In the sitting-room, all
was dark and silent: there was no fire,
no breakfast. George said it was
a wicked shame of Mrs. G., and he made up
his mind to tell her what he
thought of her when he came home in the
evening. Then he dashed on his
great-coat and hat, and, seizing his
umbrella, made for the front door.
The door was not even unbolted. George
anathematized Mrs. G. for a lazy
old woman, and thought it was very
strange that people could not get up
at a decent, respectable time, unlocked
and unbolted the door, and ran
out.
He ran hard for a quarter of a mile, and
at the end of that distance it
began to be borne in upon him as a
strange and curious thing that there
were so few people about, and that there
were no shops open. It was
certainly a very dark and foggy morning,
but still it seemed an unusual
course to stop all business on that
account. HE had to go to business:
why should other people stop in bed
merely because it was dark and foggy!
At length he reached Holborn. Not a
shutter was down! not a bus was
about! There were three men in sight, one
of whom was a policeman; a
market-cart full of cabbages, and a
dilapidated looking cab. George
pulled out his watch and looked at it: it
was five minutes to nine! He
stood still and counted his pulse. He
stooped down and felt his legs.
Then, with his watch still in his hand,
he went up to the policeman, and
asked him if he knew what the time was.
"What's the time?" said the
man, eyeing George up and down with evident
suspicion; "why, if you listen you
will hear it strike."
George listened, and a neighbouring clock
immediately obliged.
"But it's only gone three!"
said George in an injured tone, when it had
finished.
"Well, and how many did you want it
to go?" replied the constable.
"Why, nine," said George,
showing his watch.
"Do you know where you live?"
said the guardian of public order,
severely.
George thought, and gave the address.
"Oh! that's where it is, is
it?" replied the man; "well, you take my
advice and go there quietly, and take
that watch of yours with you; and
don't let's have any more of it."
And George went home again, musing as he
walked along, and let himself
in.
At first, when he got in, he determined
to undress and go to bed again;
but when he thought of the redressing and
re-washing, and the having of
another bath, he determined he would not,
but would sit up and go to
sleep in the easy-chair.
But he could not get to sleep: he never
felt more wakeful in his life; so
he lit the lamp and got out the
chess-board, and played himself a game of
chess. But even that did not enliven him:
it seemed slow somehow; so he
gave chess up and tried to read. He did
not seem able to take any sort
of interest in reading either, so he put
on his coat again and went out
for a walk.
It was horribly lonesome and dismal, and
all the policemen he met
regarded him with undisguised suspicion,
and turned their lanterns on him
and followed him about, and this had such
an effect upon him at last that
he began to feel as if he really had done
something, and he got to
slinking down the by-streets and hiding
in dark doorways when he heard
the regulation flip-flop approaching.
Of course, this conduct made the force
only more distrustful of him than
ever, and they would come and rout him
out and ask him what he was doing
there; and when he answered,
"Nothing," he had merely come out for a
stroll (it was then four o'clock in the
morning), they looked as though
they did not believe him, and two
plain-clothes constables came home with
him to see if he really did live where he
had said he did. They saw him
go in with his key, and then they took up
a position opposite and watched
the house.
He thought he would light the fire when
he got inside, and make himself
some breakfast, just to pass away the
time; but he did not seem able to
handle anything from a scuttleful of
coals to a teaspoon without dropping
it or falling over it, and making such a
noise that he was in mortal fear
that it would wake Mrs. G. up, and that
she would think it was burglars
and open the window and call
"Police!" and then these two detectives
would rush in and handcuff him, and march
him off to the police-court.
He was in a morbidly nervous state by
this time, and he pictured the
trial, and his trying to explain the
circumstances to the jury, and
nobody believing him, and his being
sentenced to twenty years' penal
servitude, and his mother dying of a
broken heart. So he gave up trying
to get breakfast, and wrapped himself up
in his overcoat and sat in the
easy-chair till Mrs. G came down at
half-past seven.
He said he had never got up too early
since that morning: it had been
such a warning to him.
We had been sitting huddled up in our
rugs while George had been telling
me this true story, and on his finishing
it I set to work to wake up
Harris with a scull. The third prod did
it: and he turned over on the
other side, and said he would be down in
a minute, and that he would have
his lace-up boots. We soon let him know
where he was, however, by the
aid of the hitcher, and he sat up
suddenly, sending Montmorency, who had
been sleeping the sleep of the just right
on the middle of his chest,
sprawling across the boat.
Then we pulled up the canvas, and all
four of us poked our heads out over
the off-side, and looked down at the
water and shivered. The idea,
overnight, had been that we should get up
early in the morning, fling off
our rugs and shawls, and, throwing back
the canvas, spring into the river
with a joyous shout, and revel in a long
delicious swim. Somehow, now
the morning had come, the notion seemed
less tempting. The water looked
damp and chilly: the wind felt cold.
"Well, who's going to be first
in?" said Harris at last.
There was no rush for precedence. George
settled the matter so far as he
was concerned by retiring into the boat
and pulling on his socks.
Montmorency gave vent to an involuntary
howl, as if merely thinking of
the thing had given him the horrors; and
Harris said it would be so
difficult to get into the boat again, and
went back and sorted out his
trousers.
I did not altogether like to give in,
though I did not relish the plunge.
There might be snags about, or weeds, I
thought. I meant to compromise
matters by going down to the edge and
just throwing the water over
myself; so I took a towel and crept out
on the bank and wormed my way
along on to the branch of a tree that
dipped down into the water.
It was bitterly cold. The wind cut like a
knife. I thought I would not
throw the water over myself after all. I
would go back into the boat and
dress; and I turned to do so; and, as I
turned, the silly branch gave
way, and I and the towel went in together
with a tremendous splash, and I
was out mid-stream with a gallon of
Thames water inside me before I knew
what had happened.
"By Jove! old J.'s gone in," I
heard Harris say, as I came blowing to the
surface. "I didn't think he'd have
the pluck to do it. Did you?"
"Is it all right?" sung out
George.
"Lovely," I spluttered back.
"You are duffers not to come in. I
wouldn't have missed this for worlds. Why
won't you try it? It only
wants a little determination."
But I could not persuade them.
Rather an amusing thing happened while
dressing that morning. I was very
cold when I got back into the boat, and,
in my hurry to get my shirt on,
I accidentally jerked it into the water.
It made me awfully wild,
especially as George burst out laughing.
I could not see anything to
laugh at, and I told George so, and he
only laughed the more. I never
saw a man laugh so much. I quite lost my
temper with him at last, and I
pointed out to him what a drivelling
maniac of an imbecile idiot he was;
but he only roared the louder. And then,
just as I was landing the
shirt, I noticed that it was not my shirt
at all, but George's, which I
had mistaken for mine; whereupon the
humour of the thing struck me for
the first time, and I began to laugh. And
the more I looked from
George's wet shirt to George, roaring
with laughter, the more I was
amused, and I laughed so much that I had
to let the shirt fall back into
the water again.
"Ar'n't you - you - going to get it
out?" said George, between his
shrieks.
I could not answer him at all for a
while, I was laughing so, but, at
last, between my peals I managed to jerk
out:
"It isn't my shirt - it's
YOURS!"
I never saw a man's face change from
lively to severe so suddenly in all
my life before.
"What!" he yelled, springing
up. "You silly cuckoo! Why can't you be
more careful what you're doing? Why the
deuce don't you go and dress on
the bank? You're not fit to be in a boat,
you're not. Gimme the
hitcher."
I tried to make him see the fun of the
thing, but he could not. George
is very dense at seeing a joke sometimes.
Harris proposed that we should have
scrambled eggs for breakfast. He
said he would cook them. It seemed, from
his account, that he was very
good at doing scrambled eggs. He often
did them at picnics and when out
on yachts. He was quite famous for them.
People who had once tasted his
scrambled eggs, so we gathered from his
conversation, never cared for any
other food afterwards, but pined away and
died when they could not get
them.
It made our mouths water to hear him talk
about the things, and we handed
him out the stove and the frying-pan and
all the eggs that had not
smashed and gone over everything in the
hamper, and begged him to begin.
He had some trouble in breaking the eggs
- or rather not so much trouble
in breaking them exactly as in getting
them into the frying-pan when
broken, and keeping them off his
trousers, and preventing them from
running up his sleeve; but he fixed some
half-a-dozen into the pan at
last, and then squatted down by the side
of the stove and chivied them
about with a fork.
It seemed harassing work, so far as
George and I could judge. Whenever
he went near the pan he burned himself,
and then he would drop everything
and dance round the stove, flicking his
fingers about and cursing the
things. Indeed, every time George and I
looked round at him he was sure
to be performing this feat. We thought at
first that it was a necessary
part of the culinary arrangements.
We did not know what scrambled eggs were,
and we fancied that it must be
some Red Indian or Sandwich Islands sort
of dish that required dances and
incantations for its proper cooking.
Montmorency went and put his nose
over it once, and the fat spluttered up
and scalded him, and then he
began dancing and cursing. Altogether it
was one of the most interesting
and exciting operations I have ever
witnessed. George and I were both
quite sorry when it was over.
The result was not altogether the success
that Harris had anticipated.
There seemed so little to show for the
business. Six eggs had gone into
the frying-pan, and all that came out was
a teaspoonful of burnt and
unappetizing looking mess.
Harris said it was the fault of the
frying-pan, and thought it would have
gone better if we had had a fish-kettle
and a gas-stove; and we decided
not to attempt the dish again until we
had those aids to housekeeping by
us.
The sun had got more powerful by the time
we had finished breakfast, and
the wind had dropped, and it was as
lovely a morning as one could desire.
Little was in sight to remind us of the
nineteenth century; and, as we
looked out upon the river in the morning
sunlight, we could almost fancy
that the centuries between us and that
ever-to-be-famous June morning of
1215 had been drawn aside, and that we,
English yeomen's sons in homespun
cloth, with dirk at belt, were waiting
there to witness the writing of
that stupendous page of history, the
meaning whereof was to be translated
to the common people some four hundred
and odd years later by one Oliver
Cromwell, who had deeply studied it.
It is a fine summer morning - sunny,
soft, and still. But through the
air there runs a thrill of coming stir.
King John has slept at Duncroft
Hall, and all the day before the little
town of Staines has echoed to the
clang of armed men, and the clatter of
great horses over its rough
stones, and the shouts of captains, and
the grim oaths and surly jests of
bearded bowmen, billmen, pikemen, and
strange-speaking foreign spearmen.
Gay-cloaked companies of knights and
squires have ridden in, all travel-
stained and dusty. And all the evening
long the timid townsmen's doors
have had to be quick opened to let in
rough groups of soldiers, for whom
there must be found both board and
lodging, and the best of both, or woe
betide the house and all within; for the
sword is judge and jury,
plaintiff and executioner, in these
tempestuous times, and pays for what
it takes by sparing those from whom it
takes it, if it pleases it to do
so.
Round the camp-fire in the market-place
gather still more of the Barons'
troops, and eat and drink deep, and
bellow forth roystering drinking
songs, and gamble and quarrel as the
evening grows and deepens into
night. The firelight sheds quaint shadows
on their piled-up arms and on
their uncouth forms. The children of the
town steal round to watch them,
wondering; and brawny country wenches,
laughing, draw near to bandy ale-
house jest and jibe with the swaggering
troopers, so unlike the village
swains, who, now despised, stand apart
behind, with vacant grins upon
their broad, peering faces. And out from
the fields around, glitter the
faint lights of more distant camps, as
here some great lord's followers
lie mustered, and there false John's
French mercenaries hover like
crouching wolves without the town.
And so, with sentinel in each dark
street, and twinkling watch-fires on
each height around, the night has worn
away, and over this fair valley of
old Thame has broken the morning of the
great day that is to close so big
with the fate of ages yet unborn.
Ever since grey dawn, in the lower of the
two islands, just above where
we are standing, there has been great
clamour, and the sound of many
workmen. The great pavilion brought there
yester eve is being raised,
and carpenters are busy nailing tiers of
seats, while `prentices from
London town are there with many-coloured
stuffs and silks and cloth of
gold and silver.
And now, lo! down upon the road that
winds along the river's bank from
Staines there come towards us, laughing
and talking together in deep
guttural bass, a half-a-score of stalwart
halbert-men - Barons' men,
these - and halt at a hundred yards or so
above us, on the other bank,
and lean upon their arms, and wait.
And so, from hour to hour, march up along
the road ever fresh groups and
bands of armed men, their casques and
breastplates flashing back the long
low lines of morning sunlight, until, as
far as eye can reach, the way
seems thick with glittering steel and
prancing steeds. And shouting
horsemen are galloping from group to
group, and little banners are
fluttering lazily in the warm breeze, and
every now and then there is a
deeper stir as the ranks make way on
either side, and some great Baron on
his war-horse, with his guard of squires
around him, passes along to take
his station at the head of his serfs and
vassals.
And up the slope of Cooper's Hill, just
opposite, are gathered the
wondering rustics and curious townsfolk,
who have run from Staines, and
none are quite sure what the bustle is
about, but each one has a
different version of the great event that
they have come to see; and some
say that much good to all the people will
come from this day's work; but
the old men shake their heads, for they
have heard such tales before.
And all the river down to Staines is
dotted with small craft and boats
and tiny coracles - which last are
growing out of favour now, and are
used only by the poorer folk. Over the
rapids, where in after years trim
Bell Weir lock will stand, they have been
forced or dragged by their
sturdy rowers, and now are crowding up as
near as they dare come to the
great covered barges, which lie in
readiness to bear King John to where
the fateful Charter waits his signing.
It is noon, and we and all the people
have been waiting patient for many
an hour, and the rumour has run round
that slippery John has again
escaped from the Barons' grasp, and has
stolen away from Duncroft Hall
with his mercenaries at his heels, and
will soon be doing other work than
signing charters for his people's
liberty.
Not so! This time the grip upon him has
been one of iron, and he has
slid and wriggled in vain. Far down the
road a little cloud of dust has
risen, and draws nearer and grows larger,
and the pattering of many hoofs
grows louder, and in and out between the
scattered groups of drawn-up
men, there pushes on its way a brilliant
cavalcade of gay-dressed lords
and knights. And front and rear, and
either flank, there ride the yeomen
of the Barons, and in the midst King
John.
He rides to where the barges lie in
readiness, and the great Barons step
forth from their ranks to meet him. He
greets them with a smile and
laugh, and pleasant honeyed words, as
though it were some feast in his
honour to which he had been invited. But
as he rises to dismount, he
casts one hurried glance from his own
French mercenaries drawn up in the
rear to the grim ranks of the Barons' men
that hem him in.
Is it too late? One fierce blow at the
unsuspecting horseman at his
side, one cry to his French troops, one
desperate charge upon the unready
lines before him, and these rebellious
Barons might rue the day they
dared to thwart his plans! A bolder hand
might have turned the game even
at that point. Had it been a Richard
there! the cup of liberty might
have been dashed from England's lips, and
the taste of freedom held back
for a hundred years.
But the heart of King John sinks before
the stern faces of the English
fighting men, and the arm of King John
drops back on to his rein, and he
dismounts and takes his seat in the
foremost barge. And the Barons
follow in, with each mailed hand upon the
sword-hilt, and the word is
given to let go.
Slowly the heavy, bright-decked barges
leave the shore of Runningmede.
Slowly against the swift current they
work their ponderous way, till,
with a low grumble, they grate against
the bank of the little island that
from this day will bear the name of Magna
Charta Island. And King John
has stepped upon the shore, and we wait
in breathless silence till a
great shout cleaves the air, and the
great cornerstone in England's
temple of liberty has, now we know, been
firmly laid.
