CHAPTER V.
Mrs. P. arouses us.--George, the sluggard.--The "weather forecast"swindle.--Our luggage.--Depravity of the small boy.--The people gatherround us.--We drive off in great style, and arrive atWaterloo.--Innocence of South Western Officials concerning such worldlythings as trains.--We are afloat, afloat in an open boat.
[Picture: Mrs. Poppets] 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 wasa-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 weshan't get on the water till after twelve. I wonder you take the troubleto get up at all."
"Um," I replied, "lucky for you that I do. If I hadn't woke you, you'dhave lain there for the whole fortnight."
[Picture: George snoring] We snarled at one another in this strain forthe next few minutes, when we were interrupted by a defiant snore fromGeorge. It reminded us, for the first time since our being called, ofhis existence. There he lay--the man who had wanted to know what time heshould wake us--on his back, with his mouth wide open, and his kneesstuck up.
I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another manasleep in bed when I am up, maddens me. It seems to me so shocking tosee the precious hours of a man's life--the priceless moments that willnever come back to him again--being wasted in mere brutish sleep.
There was George, throwing away in hideous sloth the inestimable gift oftime; his valuable life, every second of which he would have to accountfor hereafter, passing away from him, unused. He might have been upstuffing himself with eggs and bacon, irritating the dog, or flirtingwith the slavey, instead of sprawling there, sunk in soul-cloggingoblivion.
It was a terrible thought. Harris and I appeared to be struck by it atthe same instant. We determined to save him, and, in this noble resolve,our own dispute was forgotten. We flew across and slung the clothes offhim, 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 thunderput 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 thatwe had packed the tooth-brushes and the brush and comb (that tooth-brushof 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 wantedthe shaving tackle. We told him that he would have to go without shavingthat morning, as we weren't going to unpack that bag again for him, norfor 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 humansuffering? As Harris said, in his common, vulgar way, the City wouldhave to lump it.
[Picture: Two dogs and umbrella] We went downstairs to breakfast.Montmorency had invited two other dogs to come and see him off, and theywere whiling away the time by fighting on the doorstep. We calmed themwith 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 acouple of chops, saying that he would take these while they were hot, asthe beef could wait.
George got hold of the paper, and read us out the boating fatalities, andthe 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 overthe Midland Counties (London and Channel). Bar. falling."
I do think that, of all the silly, irritating tomfoolishness by which weare plagued, this "weather-forecast" fraud is about the most aggravating.It "forecasts" precisely what happened yesterday or the day before, andprecisely the opposite of what is going to happen to-day.
I remember a holiday of mine being completely ruined one late autumn byour paying attention to the weather report of the local newspaper."Heavy showers, with thunderstorms, may be expected to-day," it would sayon 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 inwagonettes and coaches as jolly and merry as could be, the sun shiningout, and not a cloud to be seen.
"Ah!" we said, as we stood looking out at them through the window, "won'tthey come home soaked!"
And we chuckled to think how wet they were going to get, and came backand stirred the fire, and got our books, and arranged our specimens ofseaweed and cockle shells. By twelve o'clock, with the sun pouring intothe room, the heat became quite oppressive, and we wondered when thoseheavy 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 goingout, as it seemed such a lovely day.
"No, no," we replied, with a knowing chuckle, "not we. _We_ don't meanto get wet--no, no."
And when the afternoon was nearly gone, and still there was no sign ofrain, we tried to cheer ourselves up with the idea that it would comedown all at once, just as the people had started for home, and were outof the reach of any shelter, and that they would thus get more drenchedthan ever. But not a drop ever fell, and it finished a grand day, and alovely night after it.
The next morning we would read that it was going to be a "warm, fine toset-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 torain hard, and a bitterly cold wind would spring up, and both would keepon steadily for the whole day, and we would come home with colds andrheumatism all over us, and go to bed.
The weather is a thing that is beyond me altogether. I never canunderstand it. The barometer is useless: it is as misleading as thenewspaper forecast.
There was one hanging up in a hotel at Oxford at which I was staying lastspring, and, when I got there, it was pointing to "set fair." It wassimply pouring with rain outside, and had been all day; and I couldn'tquite make matters out. I tapped the barometer, and it jumped up andpointed to "very dry." The Boots stopped as he was passing, and said heexpected it meant to-morrow. I fancied that maybe it was thinking of theweek before last, but Boots said, No, he thought not.
I tapped it again the next morning, and it went up still higher, and therain came down faster than ever. On Wednesday I went and hit it again,and the pointer went round towards "set fair," "very dry," and "muchheat," until it was stopped by the peg, and couldn't go any further. Ittried its best, but the instrument was built so that it couldn't prophesyfine weather any harder than it did without breaking itself. Itevidently 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 "verydry."
Meanwhile, the rain came down in a steady torrent, and the lower part ofthe town was under water, owing to the river having overflowed.
Boots said it was evident that we were going to have a prolonged spell ofgrand weather _some time_, and read out a poem which was printed over thetop of the oracle, about
"Long foretold, long last; Short notice, soon past."
The fine weather never came that summer. I expect that machine must havebeen referring to the following spring.
Then there are those new style of barometers, the long straight ones. Inever 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 getthere 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'sEly 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 itcomes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand. Theprophet we like is the old man who, on the particularly gloomy-lookingmorning of some day when we particularly want it to be fine, looks roundthe horizon with a particularly knowing eye, and says:
"Oh no, sir, I think it will clear up all right. It will break all rightenough, 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 thecircumstances of its _not_ clearing up, but continuing to rain steadilyall day.
"Ah, well," we feel, "he did his best."
For the man that prophesies us bad weather, on the contrary, we entertainonly 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 hisportent proves correct, we come back feeling still more angry againsthim, and with a vague notion that, somehow or other, he has had somethingto do with it.
It was too bright and sunny on this especial morning for George'sblood-curdling readings about "Bar. falling," "atmospheric disturbance,passing in an oblique line over Southern Europe," and "pressureincreasing," to very much upset us: and so, finding that he could notmake us wretched, and was only wasting his time, he sneaked the cigarettethat 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.
[Picture: The luggage]
There seemed a good deal of luggage, when we put it all together. Therewas the Gladstone and the small hand-bag, and the two hampers, and alarge roll of rugs, and some four or five overcoats and macintoshes, anda few umbrellas, and then there was a melon by itself in a bag, becauseit was too bulky to go in anywhere, and a couple of pounds of grapes inanother 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 streetboys did, and got interested in the show, apparently, and stopped.
Biggs's boy was the first to come round. Biggs is our greengrocer, andhis chief talent lies in securing the services of the most abandoned andunprincipled errand-boys that civilisation has as yet produced. Ifanything more than usually villainous in the boy-line crops up in ourneighbourhood, we know that it is Biggs's latest. I was told that, atthe time of the Great Coram Street murder, it was promptly concluded byour 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 towhich he was subjected by No. 19, when he called there for orders themorning after the crime (assisted by No. 21, who happened to be on thestep at the time), to prove a complete _alibi_, it would have gone hardwith him. I didn't know Biggs's boy at that time, but, from what I haveseen 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 ina great hurry when he first dawned upon the vision, but, on catchingsight of Harris and me, and Montmorency, and the things, he eased up andstared. Harris and I frowned at him. This might have wounded a moresensitive nature, but Biggs's boys are not, as a rule, touchy. He cameto a dead stop, a yard from our step, and, leaning up against therailings, and selecting a straw to chew, fixed us with his eye. Heevidently meant to see this thing out.
In another moment, the grocer's boy passed on the opposite side of thestreet. 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 ofthe step. Then the young gentleman from the boot-shop stopped, andjoined Biggs's boy; while the empty-can superintendent from "The BluePosts" took up an independent position on the curb.
"They ain't a-going to starve, are they?" said the gentleman from theboot-shop.
"Ah! you'd want to take a thing or two with _you_," retorted "The BluePosts," "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 askingeach other what was the matter. One party (the young and giddy portionof the crowd) held that it was a wedding, and pointed out Harris as thebridegroom; while the elder and more thoughtful among the populaceinclined to the idea that it was a funeral, and that I was probably thecorpse's brother.
At last, an empty cab turned up (it is a street where, as a rule, andwhen 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 ourbelongings into it, and shooting out a couple of Montmorency's friends,who had evidently sworn never to forsake him, we drove away amidst thecheers 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 startedfrom. Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterloo ever does know where atrain is going to start from, or where a train when it does start isgoing to, or anything about it. The porter who took our things thoughtit would go from number two platform, while another porter, with whom hediscussed the question, had heard a rumour that it would go from numberone. The station-master, on the other hand, was convinced it would startfrom the local.
To put an end to the matter, we went upstairs, and asked the trafficsuperintendent, and he told us that he had just met a man, who said hehad seen it at number three platform. We went to number three platform,but the authorities there said that they rather thought that train wasthe Southampton express, or else the Windsor loop. But they were sure itwasn't the Kingston train, though why they were sure it wasn't theycouldn't say.
Then our porter said he thought that must be it on the high-levelplatform; said he thought he knew the train. So we went to thehigh-level platform, and saw the engine-driver, and asked him if he wasgoing to Kingston. He said he couldn't say for certain of course, butthat he rather thought he was. Anyhow, if he wasn't the 11.5 forKingston, he said he was pretty confident he was the 9.32 for VirginiaWater, or the 10 a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, or somewhere in thatdirection, and we should all know when we got there. We slippedhalf-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 whereyou're going. You know the way, you slip off quietly and go toKingston."
"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 thehalf-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 theExeter 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 wewended our way, and round it we stored our luggage, and into it westepped.
"Are you all right, sir?" said the man.
"Right it is," we answered; and with Harris at the sculls and I at thetiller-lines, and Montmorency, unhappy and deeply suspicious, in theprow, out we shot on to the waters which, for a fortnight, were to be ourhome.