CHAPTER
V
MRS. P. AROUSES US. - GEORGE, THE
SLUGGARD. - THE "WEATHER FORECAST"
SWINDLE. - OUR LUGGAGE. - DEPRAVITY OF
THE SMALL BOY. - THE PEOPLE GATHER
ROUND US. - WE DRIVE OFF IN GREAT
STYLE, AND ARRIVE AT WATERLOO. -
INNOCENCE OF SOUTH WESTERN OFFICIALS
CONCERNING SUCH WORLDLY THINGS AS
TRAINS. - WE ARE AFLOAT, AFLOAT IN AN
OPEN BOAT.
IT was Mrs. Poppets that woke me up next
morning.
She said:
"Do you know that it's nearly nine
o'clock, sir?"
"Nine o' what?" I cried,
starting up.
"Nine o'clock," she replied,
through the keyhole. "I thought you was a-
oversleeping yourselves."
I woke Harris, and told him. He said:
"I thought you wanted to get up at
six?"
"So I did," I answered;
"why didn't you wake me?"
"How could I wake you, when you
didn't wake me?" he retorted. "Now we
shan't get on the water till after
twelve. I wonder you take the trouble
to get up at all."
"Um," I replied, "lucky
for you that I do. If I hadn't woke you, you'd
have lain there for the whole
fortnight."
We snarled at one another in this strain
for the next few minutes, when
we were interrupted by a defiant snore
from George.
It reminded us, for the first time since
our being called, of his
existence.
There he lay - the man who had wanted to
know what time he should wake us
- on his back, with his mouth wide open,
and his knees stuck up.
I don't know why it should be, I am sure;
but the sight of another man
asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.
It seems to me so shocking to
see the precious hours of a man's life -
the priceless moments that will
never come back to him again - being
wasted in mere brutish sleep.
There was George, throwing away in
hideous sloth the inestimable gift of
time; his valuable life, every second of
which he would have to account
for hereafter, passing away from him,
unused. He might have been up
stuffing himself with eggs and bacon,
irritating the dog, or flirting
with the slavey, instead of sprawling
there, sunk in soul-clogging
oblivion.
It was a terrible thought. Harris and I
appeared to be struck by it at
the same instant. We determined to save
him, and, in this noble resolve,
our own dispute was forgotten. We flew
across and slung the clothes off
him, and Harris landed him one with a
slipper, and I shouted in his ear,
and he awoke.
"Wasermarrer?" he observed,
sitting up.
"Get up, you fat-headed chunk!"
roared Harris. "It's quarter to ten."
"What!" he shrieked, jumping
out of bed into the bath; "Who the thunder
put this thing here?"
We told him he must have been a fool not
to see the bath.
We finished dressing, and, when it came
to the extras, we remembered that
we had packed the tooth-brushes and the
brush and comb (that tooth-brush
of mine will be the death of me, I know),
and we had to go downstairs,
and fish them out of the bag. And when we
had done that George wanted
the shaving tackle. We told him that he
would have to go without shaving
that morning, as we weren't going to
unpack that bag again for him, nor
for anyone like him.
He said:
"Don't be absurd. How can I go into
the City like this?"
It was certainly rather rough on the
City, but what cared we for human
suffering? As Harris said, in his common,
vulgar way, the City would
have to lump it.
We went downstairs to breakfast.
Montmorency had invited two other dogs
to come and see him off, and they were
whiling away the time by fighting
on the doorstep. We calmed them with an
umbrella, and sat down to chops
and cold beef.
Harris said:
"The great thing is to make a good
breakfast," and he started with a
couple of chops, saying that he would
take these while they were hot, as
the beef could wait.
George got hold of the paper, and read us
out the boating fatalities, and
the weather forecast, which latter
prophesied "rain, cold, wet to fine"
(whatever more than usually ghastly thing
in weather that may be),
"occasional local thunder-storms,
east wind, with general depression over
the Midland Counties (London and
Channel). Bar. falling."
I do think that, of all the silly,
irritating tomfoolishness by which we
are plagued, this
"weather-forecast" fraud is about the most aggravating.
It "forecasts" precisely what
happened yesterday or a the day before, and
precisely the opposite of what is going
to happen to-day.
I remember a holiday of mine being
completely ruined one late autumn by
our paying attention to the weather
report of the local newspaper.
"Heavy showers, with thunderstorms,
may be expected to-day," it would say
on Monday, and so we would give up our
picnic, and stop indoors all day,
waiting for the rain. - And people would
pass the house, going off in
wagonettes and coaches as jolly and merry
as could be, the sun shining
out, and not a cloud to be seen.
"Ah!" we said, as we stood
looking out at them through the window, "won't
they come home soaked!"
And we chuckled to think how wet they
were going to get, and came back
and stirred the fire, and got our books,
and arranged our specimens of
seaweed and cockle shells. By twelve
o'clock, with the sun pouring into
the room, the heat became quite
oppressive, and we wondered when those
heavy showers and occasional
thunderstorms were going to begin.
"Ah! they'll come in the afternoon,
you'll find," we said to each other.
"Oh, WON'T those people get wet.
What a lark!"
At one o'clock, the landlady would come
in to ask if we weren't going
out, as it seemed such a lovely day.
"No, no," we replied, with a
knowing chuckle, "not we. WE don't mean to
get wet - no, no."
And when the afternoon was nearly gone,
and still there was no sign of
rain, we tried to cheer ourselves up with
the idea that it would come
down all at once, just as the people had
started for home, and were out
of the reach of any shelter, and that
they would thus get more drenched
than ever. But not a drop ever fell, and
it finished a grand day, and a
lovely night after it.
The next morning we would read that it
was going to be a "warm, fine to
set-fair day; much heat;" and we
would dress ourselves in flimsy things,
and go out, and, half-an-hour after we
had started, it would commence to
rain hard, and a bitterly cold wind would
spring up, and both would keep
on steadily for the whole day, and we
would come home with colds and
rheumatism all over us, and go to bed.
The weather is a thing that is beyond me
altogether. I never can
understand it. The barometer is useless:
it is as misleading as the
newspaper forecast.
There was one hanging up in a hotel at
Oxford at which I was staying last
spring, and, when I got there, it was
pointing to "set fair." It was
simply pouring with rain outside, and had
been all day; and I couldn't
quite make matters out. I tapped the
barometer, and it jumped up and
pointed to "very dry." The
Boots stopped as he was passing, and said he
expected it meant to-morrow. I fancied
that maybe it was thinking of the
week before last, but Boots said, No, he
thought not.
I tapped it again the next morning, and
it went up still higher, and the
rain came down faster than ever. On
Wednesday I went and hit it again,
and the pointer went round towards
"set fair," "very dry," and "much
heat," until it was stopped by the
peg, and couldn't go any further. It
tried its best, but the instrument was
built so that it couldn't prophesy
fine weather any harder than it did
without breaking itself. It
evidently wanted to go on, and
prognosticate drought, and water famine,
and sunstroke, and simooms, and such
things, but the peg prevented it,
and it had to be content with pointing to
the mere commonplace "very
dry."
Meanwhile, the rain came down in a steady
torrent, and the lower part of
the town was under water, owing to the
river having overflowed.
Boots said it was evident that we were
going to have a prolonged spell of
grand weather SOME TIME, and read out a
poem which was printed over the
top of the oracle, about
"Long foretold, long last;
Short notice, soon past."
The fine weather never came that summer.
I expect that machine must have
been referring to the following spring.
Then there are those new style of
barometers, the long straight ones. I
never can make head or tail of those.
There is one side for 10 a.m.
yesterday, and one side for 10 a.m.
to-day; but you can't always get
there as early as ten, you know. It rises
or falls for rain and fine,
with much or less wind, and one end is
"Nly" and the other "Ely" (what's
Ely got to do with it?), and if you tap
it, it doesn't tell you anything.
And you've got to correct it to
sea-level, and reduce it to Fahrenheit,
and even then I don't know the answer.
But who wants to be foretold the weather?
It is bad enough when it
comes, without our having the misery of
knowing about it beforehand. The
prophet we like is the old man who, on
the particularly gloomy-looking
morning of some day when we particularly
want it to be fine, looks round
the horizon with a particularly knowing
eye, and says:
"Oh no, sir, I think it will clear
up all right. It will break all right
enough, sir."
"Ah, he knows", we say, as we
wish him good-morning, and start off;
"wonderful how these old fellows can
tell!"
And we feel an affection for that man
which is not at all lessened by the
circumstances of its NOT clearing up, but
continuing to rain steadily all
day.
"Ah, well," we feel, "he
did his best."
For the man that prophesies us bad
weather, on the contrary, we entertain
only bitter and revengeful thoughts.
"Going to clear up, d'ye
think?" we shout, cheerily, as we pass.
"Well, no, sir; I'm afraid it's
settled down for the day," he replies,
shaking his head.
"Stupid old fool!" we mutter,
"what's HE know about it?" And, if his
portent proves correct, we come back
feeling still more angry against
him, and with a vague notion that,
somehow or other, he has had something
to do with it.
It was too bright and sunny on this
especial morning for George's blood-
curdling readings about "Bar.
falling," "atmospheric disturbance, passing
in an oblique line over Southern
Europe," and "pressure increasing," to
very much upset us: and so, finding that
he could not make us wretched,
and was only wasting his time, he sneaked
the cigarette that I had
carefully rolled up for myself, and went.
Then Harris and I, having finished up the
few things left on the table,
carted out our luggage on to the
doorstep, and waited for a cab.
There seemed a good deal of luggage, when
we put it all together. There
was the Gladstone and the small hand-bag,
and the two hampers, and a
large roll of rugs, and some four or five
overcoats and macintoshes, and
a few umbrellas, and then there was a
melon by itself in a bag, because
it was too bulky to go in anywhere, and a
couple of pounds of grapes in
another bag, and a Japanese paper
umbrella, and a frying pan, which,
being too long to pack, we had wrapped
round with brown paper.
It did look a lot, and Harris and I began
to feel rather ashamed of it,
though why we should be, I can't see. No
cab came by, but the street
boys did, and got interested in the show,
apparently, and stopped.
Biggs's boy was the first to come round.
Biggs is our greengrocer, and
his chief talent lies in securing the
services of the most abandoned and
unprincipled errand-boys that
civilisation has as yet produced. If
anything more than usually villainous in
the boy-line crops up in our
neighbourhood, we know that it is Biggs's
latest. I was told that, at
the time of the Great Coram Street
murder, it was promptly concluded by
our street that Biggs's boy (for that
period) was at the bottom of it,
and had he not been able, in reply to the
severe cross-examination to
which he was subjected by No. 19, when he
called there for orders the
morning after the crime (assisted by No.
21, who happened to be on the
step at the time), to prove a complete
ALIBI, it would have gone hard
with him. I didn't know Biggs's boy at
that time, but, from what I have
seen of them since, I should not have
attached much importance to that
ALIBI myself.
Biggs's boy, as I have said, came round
the corner. He was evidently in
a great hurry when he first dawned upon
the vision, but, on catching
sight of Harris and me, and Montmorency,
and the things, he eased up and
stared. Harris and I frowned at him. This
might have wounded a more
sensitive nature, but Biggs's boys are
not, as a rule, touchy. He came
to a dead stop, a yard from our step,
and, leaning up against the
railings, and selecting a straw to chew,
fixed us with his eye. He
evidently meant to see this thing out.
In another moment, the grocer's boy
passed on the opposite side of the
street. Biggs's boy hailed him:
"Hi! ground floor o' 42's
a-moving."
The grocer's boy came across, and took up
a position on the other side of
the step. Then the young gentleman from
the boot-shop stopped, and
joined Biggs's boy; while the empty-can
superintendent from "The Blue
Posts" took up an independent
position on the curb.
"They ain't a-going to starve, are
they? " said the gentleman from the
boot-shop.
"Ah! you'd want to take a thing or
two with YOU," retorted "The Blue
Posts," "if you was a-going to
cross the Atlantic in a small boat."
"They ain't a-going to cross the
Atlantic," struck in Biggs's boy;
"they're a-going to find
Stanley."
By this time, quite a small crowd had
collected, and people were asking
each other what was the matter. One party
(the young and giddy portion
of the crowd) held that it was a wedding,
and pointed out Harris as the
bridegroom; while the elder and more
thoughtful among the populace
inclined to the idea that it was a
funeral, and that I was probably the
corpse's brother.
At last, an empty cab turned up (it is a
street where, as a rule, and
when they are not wanted, empty cabs pass
at the rate of three a minute,
and hang about, and get in your way), and
packing ourselves and our
belongings into it, and shooting out a
couple of Montmorency's friends,
who had evidently sworn never to forsake
him, we drove away amidst the
cheers of the crowd, Biggs's boy shying a
carrot after us for luck.
We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked
where the eleven-five started
from. Of course nobody knew; nobody at
Waterloo ever does know where a
train is going to start from, or where a
train when it does start is
going to, or anything about it. The
porter who took our things thought
it would go from number two platform,
while another porter, with whom he
discussed the question, had heard a
rumour that it would go from number
one. The station-master, on the other
hand, was convinced it would start
from the local.
To put an end to the matter, we went
upstairs, and asked the traffic
superintendent, and he told us that he
had just met a man, who said he
had seen it at number three platform. We
went to number three platform,
but the authorities there said that they
rather thought that train was
the Southampton express, or else the
Windsor loop. But they were sure it
wasn't the Kingston train, though why
they were sure it wasn't they
couldn't say.
Then our porter said he thought that must
be it on the high-level
platform; said he thought he knew the
train. So we went to the high-
level platform, and saw the
engine-driver, and asked him if he was going
to Kingston. He said he couldn't say for
certain of course, but that he
rather thought he was. Anyhow, if he
wasn't the 11.5 for Kingston, he
said he was pretty confident he was the
9.32 for Virginia Water, or the
10 a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, or
somewhere in that direction,
and we should all know when we got there.
We slipped half-a-crown into
his hand, and begged him to be the 11.5
for Kingston.
"Nobody will ever know, on this
line," we said, "what you are, or where
you're going. You know the way, you slip
off quietly and go to
Kingston."
"Well, I don't know, gents,"
replied the noble fellow, "but I suppose
SOME train's got to go to Kingston; and
I'll do it. Gimme the half-
crown."
Thus we got to Kingston by the London and
South-Western Railway.
We learnt, afterwards, that the train we
had come by was really the
Exeter mail, and that they had spent
hours at Waterloo, looking for it,
and nobody knew what had become of it.
Our boat was waiting for us at Kingston
just below bridge, and to it we
wended our way, and round it we stored
our luggage, and into it we
stepped.
"Are you all right, sir?" said
the man.
"Right it is," we answered; and
with Harris at the sculls and I at the
tiller-lines, and Montmorency, unhappy
and deeply suspicious, in the
prow, out we shot on to the waters which,
for a fortnight, were to be our
home.
