The procession left Mulberry House in the following order: the first fly contained all that was left of Mr. Bindon. The seats were occupied by four ladies--excited ladies. Mr. Bindon--all, we repeat, that was left of him--stood up between the four. He had not much standing room.
Around the first fly circled a crowd of boys. The crowd consisted of twelve--twelve sons! They hurrahed and shouted, they jumped and ran. Their proceedings gave to the procession an air of triumph. Eight young ladies walked beside the fly, the driver of which had received instructions not to proceed above a walking pace. These young ladies wept.
The second fly contained seven ladies, five inside and two upon the box. The language of these ladies was both fluent and fervid. They beguiled the tedium of the way by making personal remarks which must have been distinctly audible to at least one person in the fly in front. This person was kept in a perpendicular position by the points of four umbrellas.
"I hope," observed Mrs. Harland, when the procession had started, "that they won't murder him."
"I don't think you need be afraid of that, my love. They will merely escort him back, in the bosom of his family, to the City of the Saints."
Mr. Harland examined a cheque, which was written in a trembling hand, and the ink on which was scarcely dry. And the procession passed from sight.
I must confess that the idea appealed to Leila more strongly than it did to me. I do not deny that it struck me as original. But it does not follow that because an idea is original it is of much practical value. Leila thought that it was just the thing which was wanted to calm her condition of nervous disquietude. So, of course, I said nothing.
At that time we were living at The Larches, and had only just discovered what a striking difference there is in a house, which is nine miles away from anywhere, in the summer and in the winter. In the summer the place was a perfect paradise. The house was embowered in trees. Within a stone's-throw was a little stream, which murmured as it meandered, singing, as it were, songs of Arcady. But as the nights grew longer, and the mornings further off, it was even painful to observe what a different aspect The Larches began to wear. The winds howled through the leafless corpses of the trees like souls in agony. The stream rose till it flooded all the neighbourhood. During the long evenings the feeling of solitude was really most depressing. As Leila justly remarked, if anything happened in the dead of the night, and we were in need of assistance, where should we be? The nearest doctor was thirteen miles off. A policeman seven. The only servants we could induce to stay with us were an old woman, who was so old that she had to choose between us and the workhouse, and a young girl who had come to us out of the workhouse, and who was undoubtedly meditating returning whence she came. She said that it was livelier at the workhouse than at The Larches. Of that, personally, I have not the slightest doubt.
One day in November I was reading a paper. We did get a paper, now and then, though I trust that not many people have realised what it means to drive, in English November weather, in an open basket-carriage, perhaps eighteen miles to get one. In this paper a paragraph caught my eye, which was headed, "A Burglar Alarm." I read it. The idea of the thing was this. You were to cover the hall, and the stairs, and the banisters, and any other place where anybody was likely to tread, with open newspapers. Then, if a burglar came into the house in the middle of the night, he would step on the newspapers, and you would hear them rustle, and would know that he was there. The idea rather struck me. I mentioned it to Leila. Indeed, I read the paragraph to her there and then. She was quite ecstatic.
"We'll try it to-night," she said.
I did not see the exactsequitur. Nor why we should lay traps for burglars because paragraphs appeared in papers. I told her so.
"If a burglar did break in, where should we be?" she asked.
That was her favourite form of inquiry. I really could not tell her, though I strongly suspected that I, for one, should be in bed. Nor did I see how, in that respect, the situation would be altered, although the house was covered with newspapers, both within and without.
"My dear Frederic, how dense you are! Don't you understand that we should at least know that the man was there, and that would be some relief at any rate."
I was not so sure of this myself, although I did not care to interrupt her flow of eloquence to tell her so.
"I'll hunt up all the newspapers I can find, and, to-night, we'll cover the stairs."
We did. Leila is of a sanguine temperament. When she has made up her mind on a subject I generally acquiesce. I acquiesced then.
Shortly before nine, which hour, as a rule, was our bedtime at The Larches, except on those occasions when we retired earlier, we commenced our operations.
We endeavoured to enlist the servants' sympathy and assistance; but Mrs. Perkins evidently regarded the whole affair as savouring of lunacy, and Eliza did nothing else but giggle. So Leila and I had, practically, to do it all. I think that we made a very fair job of it, on the whole. We laid between a dozen and twenty newspapers down in the hall. We covered the stairs.
By the way, it was only after we had covered the stairs that we discovered that it would be difficult, not to say impossible, for anyone to ascend them without disarranging all that we had done; so as we ourselves, and Mrs. Perkins and Eliza were all below, the stairs had to be done over again. The servants went up first. We followed. And, as we followed, we covered the treads with the papers as we went. We even hung newspapers over the banisters, so that if a burglar, alarmed at the noise which he found he made by stepping on the stairs, caught hold of the banisters, he would not find that there was safety there.
I rather fancy that the preparations which we had made for an enemy who might or might not come acted on our own nervous systems.
Anyhow, hardly had we got into our bedroom and locked the door, than there came a noise as if all the newspapers we had just laid down were being stepped upon at once. And not only stepped but jumped on. Leila was immediately in an almost painful state of agitation. I, of course, was not so much affected. Still, I own that, even to me, the thing seemed curious.
"Did you lock the door?" she gasped.
"Certainly. Didn't you see me lock it?"
"Don't let him come in!"
"Don't let who come in, my dear?"
Leila did not say. She stood listening, trembling like a leaf. All was still.
"Frederic, who can it be?"
"I think, my dear, that perhaps I had better go and inquire."
Scarcely had I spoken than there came the noise again. This time it was louder than before, and more prolonged. Leila threw her arms about my neck. She was almost in hysterics.
"Frederic, it's a burglar!"
I did not see very well how it could be. If it was, then the fellow must have been secreted in the house. He must have watched us to our bedrooms, and then have instantaneously taken advantage of the fact of our backs being turned to indulge in acrobatic performances which were scarcely in accordance with received burglarious traditions.
"Nonsense, my dear, it is nothing of the kind."
As a matter of fact, it was not. It was the cat. Or rather, to be quite accurate, the kitten. Our cat, whose name, although the animal was of the feminine persuasion, was Simon, had recently had an addition to her family. In fact, five additions. Four of them, within a very short time of their birth, had passed from life--and into a pail of water. One of them remained alive. I really cannot say why. I imagine that a white eye had something to do with the matter. The small creature was like a lump of soot, except about the region of one eye. There it was as white as the driven, or the undriven--I don't know which it is, but I know it is one or the other--snow. Leila had announced that the creature was to be named Macgregor. I can only repeat that, again, I cannot say why. Leila has a somewhat peculiar habit of naming, or, perhaps, it would be more correct to write, misnaming, the animals which come into her possession. She called the pony we had at The Larches the Duke of Liverpool. She said she did so because there was not a Duke of Liverpool. That seemed to me an insufficient reason why the title should have been conferred upon a spavined, ill-groomed little brute, with a nasty temper, and only three sound legs to move, or, as was more frequently the case, to stand upon.
It seems that Macgregor had mistaken us. He seems to have supposed that Leila and I had occupied the better part of an hour, and taken the stiffening out of our backs, in order to provide him with a novel form of amusement, by means of which he might while away, to his own satisfaction, the witching hours of the stilly night. It appears, too, that Simon, his masculinely-named female parent, had shared in his delusion. At any rate, when Leila was beginning to think that all the burglars in England were dancing breakdowns on those newspapers, and I went out to see what really was the matter, with a revolver which was not loaded, and which never had been loaded, in one hand, and a hairbrush in the other, I found Macgregor dashing up and down the stairs in a perfect ecstasy of enjoyment, while his wretched parent, forgetting the respect which she owed to herself, and the example which she owed to him, was rushing and raging after him. I threw the revolver at Simon and the hairbrush at Macgregor.
Of course Macgregor had to be captured. Also Simon, his mother. It was absurd to suppose that we had covered the house from the top to the bottom with newspapers in order that these two animals might render life not worth the living. But Macgregor was not easy to catch. Leila and I had to hunt him single-handed; though, perhaps, double-handed would have been the better expression. We endeavoured to summon the servants to our assistance. But Mrs. Perkins, who was more than a little deaf when wide awake, was stone deaf when fast asleep. We never entertained any hopes of being able to make her hear. Our idea was to rouse Eliza, then to induce Eliza to prod Mrs. Perkins with her elbow in the side, and so to establish a chain of communication.
However, directly we began to rap at the bedroom door, Eliza seemed to be developing strong symptoms of hysterics, apparently under the impression that we were burglars. So, since the girl was always more or less of an idiot, and we thought it would, perhaps, not be worth our while to send her into fits, we resolved, as has been said, to hunt Macgregor single-handed.
A kitten is a lively animal. One has an object-lesson on this interesting fact in natural history, when, with the aid of a single candle, two persons endeavour to catch a kitten in a large, rambling, old-fashioned house in the darkness of the night. We almost had Macgregor several times. Never quite. We followed him all over the house with untiring and, one might almost write, increasing zeal. Up the stairs and down the stairs. Then up again, then down again. I doubt if, in his short life, Macgregor had ever enjoyed himself so much before. For my part I vowed that never again should alusus naturæ, in the shape of a white eye, keep a kitten out of a pail.
Finally, in the back kitchen, while making a frenzied dash at him, I missed Macgregor, and knocked the candle over. In endeavouring to save it I cannoned into Leila. I had not previously been aware that she was in my near neighbourhood. With such force did I strike her that I sent her flying backwards, until, reaching the floor, she found a resting-place amidst the pots and the pans. She fell with such a clatter, and with such a din, that, in the darkness, my blood ran cold. And, having fallen, she began to scream in a manner which deprived me of the little self-possession I had left.
"Is that you, Leila?" I inquired.
I felt morally persuaded that it was. I did not see who else it could be. Still, I imagined that I might as well make sure. She did not tell me in so many words. But the voice which screamed was the voice of Leila.
"Are you hurt?" I asked.
Again she did not answer. She only screamed. I was in darkness. I had not saved the candle. I could not see her. I could not feel, because every time I moved I seemed to hit her with another saucepan. I had no matches. I knew of none nearer than the bedroom. I had to leave Leila screaming there. I had to find my way out of that back kitchen, stumbling, as it seemed to me, over all the contents of an ironmonger's shop, and almost knocking out my brains against the partly-opened door. I had to grope my way along the newspaper-covered passages, across the newspaper-covered hall, up the newspaper-covered stairs. I had to hang on to the newspaper-covered banisters.
If ever there was a burglar alarm I sounded it. I heard Macgregor and Simon, his mother, indulging in their little playful pranks, above and below me, and everywhere at once. But the servants did not seem to hear anything. No, nothing. I had no means of knowing if Eliza had frightened herself into a fit, and if Mrs. Perkins was dead. As I entered the bedroom I swept a jug and basin off the wash-hand-stand. It sounded as if I had broken the contents of a china shop. But no one seemed to notice it--not even Simon and Macgregor. Such was my state of agitation, and such the confusion of my mind, that I floundered into the middle cupboard of the wardrobe, which, in some mysterious manner, must have opened of its own accord. I had dragged all Leila's dresses off the hooks and half smothered myself beneath them before I discovered where I was. But I found the matches. Oh, yes, I found them after all.
I also found Leila. She was sitting up on the kitchen floor, in the midst of the pots and pans, in a frame of mind which, by me, was unexpected. She seemed to be under the impression that my conduct had been base, not to say heartless. She appeared to be under the, to me, extraordinary delusion that I had scrambled in the darkness up the newspaper-covered stairs, and fallen over everything which I could fall over, because I hated her. She wept. It was all I myself could do to refrain from tears.
However, we managed to secure Macgregor and his mother in the drawing-room, in which apartment we felt morally persuaded that they would break everything that was worth the breaking. Then Leila insisted upon me rearranging the ingenious little trap which we had laid to catch a burglar.
"What," she remarked, as she wiped away a final tear, "was the use of doing a thing at all if we didn't do it properly?"
There was wisdom in her unanswerable inquiry, though I could not but feel thankful as I reflected that there were no more cats in the house who could mistake our intentions, and, under an entire misapprehension, turn them topsy-turvy once again.
Leila seemed to think that it was all owing to me that the newspapers had become disarranged. I do not know what could have put such an idea into her head. But it was obviously because she thought so that she insisted upon my doing all the work, while she stood three stairs above me and issued her instructions.
I am of a plethoric habit, and by the time I had done all the stooping which Leila thought was indispensable if the burglar alarm was to be all that a burglar alarm ought to be, I was, I am convinced, within a measurable distance of apoplexy. Indeed, I hinted to Leila that burglars might take up their permanent residence at The Larches before I should ever again be persuaded to make such arrangements for their reception. As for that paragraph in the paper, the stuff which some of the papers do contain is really monstrous. If I ever do encounter the editor of that particular journal in private life, I care not where nor when, I shall have to be bound over by the magistrates in at least two sureties, I know I shall.
When Leila, on entering the bedroom, stepped on the handle of the broken jug and perceived the rest of the remains, and that there was about half an inch of water on the floor, I must say that I found her behaviour not a little trying. I had not informed her of the accident which, when I was searching for the matches, I had had, because, such was my state of agitation, it had slipped my mind--though, I know, she doubts it to this hour.
I was aware that she was bound to discover what had happened, therefore why should I have attempted to conceal it? Under the circumstances it is a mere absurdity to imagine that I could have proposed to myself to do anything of the kind; nor was it necessary for her to inform me, especially in the way in which she did inform me, that that toilet set had been one of her wedding presents. If a wedding present is to be regarded as a fetish in a family, and made a sort of little god of, then all I can say is that I wish she had had fewer wedding presents even than she did have.
I regret to have to write that Leila did not hesitate to suggest that I had broken that toilet set on purpose. According to her it was all part of my heartlessness and the hatred which I bore her. That I had almost killed myself while hunting for the matches was nothing to her. Nor did she pause to consider how I could have done it on purpose, when, such was the Egyptian nature of the darkness, I did not even know that the toilet set was there. We mopped the water up with the towels. Then Leila knelt down and pieced the fragments of the toilet set together as best she could, and continued to address me as if I had been guilty, at the very least, of treason felony. When she discovered that during my unfortunate search for those mislaid and miserable matches I had also accidentally and quite unintentionally visited the wardrobe, I thought that she would have thrown something at me, even though she would have had to use as missiles pieces of the broken ware.
It appeared that in dragging Leila's dresses off the hooks I had had what one is bound to confess was the singular ill-fortune to tear holes in most, if not in all of them. Insignificant holes they were for the most part. Really hardly worth the mentioning, though you would not have thought they were hardly worth the mentioning if you had heard Leila. True, I had made rather a lengthy incision in the back of her best silk, and ripped the waistband off her tailor-made; but the rest of the garments were scarcely, that is to say, from my point of view, not appreciably damaged. And when you consider that in my agitation I had struggled as for my life in that death-trap of a wardrobe, surely an allowance might have been made. Leila, however, made absolutely none.
That was not upon the whole a restful night. Neither Leila nor I wooed sweet sleep in that equable, at-peace-with-all-the-world frame of mind in which she should be wooed. It was some time before I ventured into bed at all. When at last I insinuated myself between the sheets Leila's observations followed me. Indeed, if I may be allowed to say so, they more than followed me. I had to coax her with all the power of coaxing that was in me before she could be induced to even think of slumber. Seating herself upon a chair, she announced her unalterable determination to spend the night there rather than consent to share her couch with the being who had torn her dresses. I perceived quite plainly that that burglar alarm was not going to prove an economical contrivance. The little mishaps which I had had were likely to prove a more serious matter than any injury which mere burglars might have caused. But no matter. Leila protests that upon that fateful night I promised, as some slight solatium to her injured feelings, not to speak of her damaged vestments, to present her with six new dresses. This sounds to me almost incredible. I scarcely think that under any circumstances I can have gone so far as that. And when she adds, as she does add, that I gave her my solemn assurance that she should be allowed to select and to purchase at my expense any toilet set which she might see, and which might take her fancy when she next went up with me to town, I can only declare that if I did give such an undertaking it was only because I had firmly and finally resolved, in my own mind, that while such a prospect stared me in the face she never should go up with me to town again. But, as I have said already, no matter. I daresay that I did promise something. Now, I do not care what I promised. Whatever it was, the promise was extracted from me under pressure. I never meant to keep it. That I earnestly affirm.
When finally, having for all I know promised to present her with the contents of half the shops in Regent Street and of all the shops in Piccadilly, I had succeeded in persuading her to come to bed, the excitement she had undergone told upon her slight and fragile frame, and ere long my Leila was asleep. I, too, slept at her side. Nor during the remaining silent watches of the night did aught disturb our rest.
We were roused by someone knocking at our bedroom door. I awoke with the immediate consciousness that we had overslept ourselves. As a matter of fact we had, by about two hours.
"Frederic!" exclaimed Leila, in that nervous way of hers which is apt to convey to those who do not know her the impression that the last trump has sounded. "There's someone at the door!"
"Who's there?" I asked.
The voice which answered was the voice of Eliza.
"If you please, sir, there's been robbers in the house!"
"Robbers! Don't talk such nonsense!"
"If you please, sir, it ain't nonsense. Mrs. Perkins says there have!"
And what Mrs. Perkins said was true. There had been robbers in the house; or, at any rate, a robber; a midnight felon; a rifler of the homes of honest men. He had made his entry by way of the back kitchen window. He had had his supper in the front kitchen. A hearty meal it must have been. There were the remains of the feast still on the board. He seemed to have eaten all that there was worth eating. He had drunk all that there was worth drinking. He had certainly taken away with him on his departure all that there was worth taking. He had stripped the house of all its valuables. True, they were not many; but they were our all. And they were gone.
I imagine that few burglaries have been better carried through. He was a conscientious and observant workman of his kind. The ruthless villain! I hope one day to lay hands upon him somewhere. The county constabulary, I am certain, never will.
As for the burglar alarm--the burglar alarm was arranged in a neat heap in a corner of the hall. It had not fulfilled the purpose it had been intended to fulfil. Like Macgregor and Simon, his mother, the burglar had misunderstood the intentions which had actuated our bosoms, Leila's and mine, when we had placed it there. He cannot have read the paragraph we had noticed in the paper.
I suspect that that burglar must have been, in his way--his own way--a humorist. He had seen those newspapers apparently; and, if you reflect, it was not strange: he had wondered what they meant by being there. Possibly he had supposed that they had been placed there to save the oilcloth and the carpets from being stepped upon. Anyhow, being certain that at any rate his boots were clean, and that he stepped lightly, he picked up the newspapers carefully one by one, folded them neatly into four, and placed them, as I have said, in a little heap in a corner of the hall.
"My Dearest Mamma,--I have had the most delightful time you can possibly think of. Everybody and everything has been so nice! And Jack has been teaching me sculling. And--oh, what do you think?--he drowned me! Yes--completely! Only, of course, it was all my fault. And he pulled me out of the water by the hair of my head--or something; I don't know what, or how. Wasn't it noble of him? I never enjoyed anything so much in all my life!
"But I will tell you all about it. I know you must feel anxious. Only don't think I'm dead, because I'm not. I haven't even caught a cold. All owing to Charlie. He says I wasn't in the water long enough; that's what he says. I assure you I was in the water quite long enough for me!
"You know, ever since we've been down here we've been on the river every day, Charlie and I. His mother--Mrs. Mason, you know--doesn't care for the water; she says it's damp. But I think that's because she knows that two are company, and is tender-hearted--like you, my dearest Momkins! Besides, she likes fussing about and paying visits, and she is so good--I hope that I shall be as good as she is one of these fine days! But you can never tell!
"Of course it was very nice being pulled about. Only Charlie was so aggravating! He wouldn't do in the least bit what you told him. I would say to him before we started:
"'Charlie, do take me for a long row--now, promise me!' And he would say:
"'Certainly. Fourteen miles out and fifteen in."
"'Don't be silly! I wish you would--I do so like to be pulled.'
"He would be standing on the bank with his back to the water, and with me just in front of him. He would stretch out his arm.
"'Tip us your flipper!' He meant, 'Give me your hand.' When he chooses Charlie can be slangy. 'I'll pull you into the river.'
"It was not the slightest use my talking. I would sigh, and get into the boat and hope for the best. But I never got it. No!
"As soon as we had gone three or four hundred yards Charlie would pull towards a little island, which is just beyond the bend in the river--I don't know who put it there; I know that I often wished that it was further--and row right round it into a sort of little creek which was on the other side, which was just large enough to hold the boat, and where no one could see us because of the trees. So far as privacy was concerned we might as well have been in the heart of a virgin forest. And there Charlie would stop, and do nothing else but talk; though I'm bound to confess that he chose interesting subjects of conversation as a rule, because generally, when he wasn't talking of himself, he was talking of me. And it is such a help to conversation when one is well acquainted with the topic under discussion. But he did so annoy me, because he would never do what I told him. I wanted him to row me to Oxford, or somewhere. But he said it was so hot--I didn't feel hot!--and Oxford was twenty miles away, and more. That was nonsense, because quite little electric launches go there and back in a day. At least, I am nearly sure they do.
"But what irritated me more than anything else was because he kept on asking me why, if I was so fond of rowing, with the thermometer four hundred degrees above bursting point--I don't believe it was anything like so hot as that, but that is what he said--I didn't row myself. He knew I couldn't. But I made up my mind that I would learn, and, what is more, I would teach myself: I would show him what I could do.
"So one morning I got up, all alone, quite early, without breathing a single word to anyone. I don't know how early it was, but I know it was early, because, when I let myself through the dining-room window--French window--into the garden, there was not a creature in sight. The garden runs right down to the river. The boat is kept tied to the bank. I pulled it close and got into it--and directly I got into it it wobbled.
"Dearest mamma, even at that last moment--or at that first moment, whichever it was--I almost wished I hadn't come. Suppose I should upset! I do believe I should have gone straight back again to bed, only I couldn't. The boat had drifted to the end of the string and was ever so far from the land, and how to get it back again I didn't know. So I sat still, and scarcely dared to breathe. But it did seem so silly to sit still like that. If anybody saw me what should I say? I had a pair of nail-scissors in my pocket, and with them I cut the string. They were a very small pair, and the string was thick and it was wet. It took me a long time to cut it. But I succeeded at last. I was adrift on the waters!
"Dearest mamma, have you ever felt what it is like to be adrift, all alone by yourself, in a dinghy?--you know what that is, I am sure. I think that is how it is spelt. I hope you never have, for your own sake. It is awful! I could have screamed, only I dared not, for fear of upsetting the boat. I had never thought of the oars until I was adrift. And when I did think of them my heart went into my mouth--between ourselves, I believe it was there already. They were generally taken out of the boat at night. But, fortunately, Charlie had been too lazy the evening before and had left them in. And there they were, staring me in the face. I took hold of one very gently, but directly I began to lift it the boat began again to wobble. I tried to think I didn't care. I clenched my teeth and I kept on lifting the oar, and at last I got it straight up in the air--like a scaffold-pole. I had had no idea it was so heavy. It was all I could do to hold it; in fact, I couldn't hold it. To my horror it slipped out of my grasp and fell into the stream with a splash. It drenched me with water from head to foot. And there it was, floating about by itself, ever so far away.
"I quite abandoned hope. I gave myself up for lost. I tried to collect my presence of mind and to think of the Royal Humane Society's directions for drowning--which are printed on the board in Hyde Park, you know. Judged by the light of after events, losing that oar was the most fortunate thing which could have happened to me. If I had not lost it I should have drowned myself. My body might have been lying at the bottom of the river even now. But I did not know that at the time. And after I had abandoned hope it was all I could do to keep from crying.
"Suddenly someone called to me from the bank. It was Charlie. He was not very well dressed; he had his towel over his arm; he was going for his morning bathe. But I don't think I ever had loved him so much as when I heard his voice and saw him standing there--no, not even in that glad moment when first he told me that he loved me and asked me to be his wife.
"'Oh, Charlie!' I cried. 'I'm drowning!'
"'That's all right!' It sounded unfeeling, but I knew what he meant. 'I'll swim out to you.'
"He leaped head foremost into the river as if it had been nothing at all, and swam out to me as if he had been a dog. He swam first of all to the oar, and then he swam to the boat.
"'Sit still!' he said.
"But it was not the slightest use my sitting still when he himself nearly pulled the boat right over. Almost before I knew it he was sitting on the seat in front of me, sopping wet and laughing.
"'What's the meaning of this?' he asked.
"'I'm learning to row.'
"'You looked as if you were learning to row! Well, have you learnt?'
"'Charlie, you're not to laugh at me! It isn't right. Some girls have people to teach them rowing--people who care for them, that is. But I haven't, so of course I have to teach myself. And I have to get up in the small hours of the morning to do it too.' I sighed--or I chose to let him think I did--'I might have been drowned.'
"'That's true--you might.' He looked at me hard, and I believe there was a twinkle in his eyes. But as I looked right past him, far across the water, and he saw that I was serious, I think that it went no further. 'Look here, Miss Whitby----'
"'You're not to call me Miss Whitby, Charlie!'
"'Very well, I won't. Look here, young person----'
"'And you're not to call me young person either. I'm not a young person.'
"'Then look here, old chap----'
"'Charlie Mason, if you call me old chap I'll get out of the boat this instant!'
"'That's right. Do.' He pretended to wait for me to get out. I was not so absurd. He went on: 'I don't know if you're aware that it's easier to learn rowing with one scull than with two?'
"'How was I to know that? No one ever told me. Nobody takes sufficient interest in me to tell me anything.'
"'If you had betrayed the slightest sign of desiring the information I would have taken sufficient interest in you to tell you that. I came out here to have a dip. I have had half of it. During the interval, before I have the other half, I shall have pleasure in imparting to you that instruction for which your soul professes to yearn.' I had said nothing about my soul, or about yearning either; I am not so profane. He pointed to the seat behind me. 'Get on to that seat and sit in the middle.'
"'You must take the boat to shore first. You know how strongly I object to changing places while the boat is in the middle of the river; it does make it wobble so.'
"'Is the teacher to obey or to be obeyed? Execute my commands!'
"I 'executed his commands,' and the boat did not turn over. Charlie moved on to the seat which I had occupied. He showed me his back.
"'Do as I do.'
"I did as he did, or I tried to. He put one of the oars in its place in the water without the slightest difficulty. I did not find it by any means so easy.
"'May I ask, before we proceed any further, if it is your intention to knock me overboard?' He said that simply because I happened to hit him with my oar as I was lifting it. The thing would not go right. I daresay that I did knock him two or three times, but there was really no necessity why he should make a fuss, as he did do. 'Is your scull having a row with you, or are you having a row with it? What is the matter?'
"Thank you, nothing is the matter."
"I scorned to complain.
"'I'm glad to learn it; I hate to hear of people falling out. Now, are you all right?'
"'I am perfectly right.'
"He glanced round to inspect me.
"'Yes, you look perfectly right. You've got your scull the wrong way round.' I turned the thing. 'Now you've got it upside down.'
"'What do you mean? You don't mean to tell me that the other end ought to be in the water?'
"'No, I don't mean to tell you quite that, but I do mean to tell you that you ought to hold it so that the hollow part of the blade looks in front of you. It's an elementary fact, but it is a fact.' I turned the thing again. 'Suppose you put three or four feet more of it out of the boat. As you're holding it at present a good part of your scull seems to run to handle.' I pushed some more of the thing through the place they call the rowlock. 'I didn't tell you to put the whole of it out of the boat; it's just as well to keep something to catch hold of, if only for the look of the thing. If you observe, there's a strip of leather round the scull. That strip of leather marks the point where the scull is supposed to rest in the rowlock. That's better. Your hands are wrong; shift them. Hold your scull as I am holding mine.'
"It was all very well of him to talk like that, but it was most unfair, besides being ridiculous. His hands are, at least, twice as large as mine; he could get right hold of his oar, while I could scarcely get hold of mine at all. But I declined to argue.
"'Now, when I say "pull," pull. And it's about time that somebody did begin to pull, or very shortly we shall be aground. Now, pull!'
"For some reason, I don't know what, the boat began to turn right round. Charlie immediately stopped rowing. I had never begun. Of course, at once Charlie tried to be funny.
"'I see the progress of this boat is going to be conducted on the tee-to-tum principle. May I ask why you didn't pull?'
"'Because I couldn't.'
"'Why couldn't you?'
"'Because I couldn't get my oar out of the water.'
"'So I should imagine. There appears to be six feet more of it in the water than there ought to be. This is not intended to be a lesson in punting. In punting one desires to feel the bed of the river; you and I do not want to get quite so deep.'
"'I wish you wouldn't laugh at me.'
"'My dear May, nothing can be further from my thoughts. How could I dare? Let us try again. Before making our second effort I should, perhaps, tell you that it is advisable to put your scull in just deep enough to cover the blade, and then to pull it steadily out again. There's no hurry. Take your time; there's no fear of our going ashore just yet. At present we look more like crossing the river. Now, are you ready. When I say the word--pull!'
"Again the boat began to turn.
"'Charlie, I cannot get my oar out of the water. I'm not as strong as a horse.'
"He looked at me and laughed. I could have laughed, only I was afraid of crying; it was so vexing to feel one was so stupid.
"'When I was a small boy and I first started to row I couldn't get my oar out of the water, except when I didn't want to, and then it came out too easily. See, May, I'll keep the boat straight, and you have one or two shots at paddling.'
"I had what he called 'one or two shots at paddling,' that is, I just dipped my oar into the water and pulled. I began to feel that I was getting the hang of the thing--Charlie's own words. I saw that it was going to be much harder than I had ever imagined, but I did not mind that, because, as I say, I did feel that I was getting on.
"'Now,' said Charlie, 'I'll paddle.'
"Directly he began to paddle the boat began to turn.
"'What makes the boat go round?'
"'It's because you don't pull strong enough. If two persons don't pull equally--that is, together, and with equal strength--the boat is bound to turn.'
"When he said that I made up my mind that I would pull stronger; the boat should not go round. So I shut my eyes and clenched my teeth and I pulled with all my might, and before I knew what had happened, I was in the water!
"Charlie says that I caught a crab. He says, in my haste and my excitement--I didn't know I was excited, but I suppose I must have been--I did not put the oar into the water at all; I pulled with all my might at the vacant air. I know that I fell backwards off my seat, and that I made a wild grab at anything and everything, and that the boat went over.
"I never shall forget it. The water got into my ears and eyes and nose and mouth, and I thought that I never should stop going down. Then, all of a sudden, I found myself on the surface again, with the sky above me and Charlie's arm about my waist.
"Keep still," he said.
I did keep still; he says I did keep still. He says himself that I behaved like a regular trump. I do declare to you, mamma, that I never felt the least bit uneasy directly I felt Charlie's arm round my waist. Wasn't it strange?
"'You won't let me drown, Charlie, will you?'
"That was all I said.
"'Not if I know it. It's all right, May; we're going shares in the other half of my dip, that's all. I'll take you ashore as easy as winking.'
"I don't know exactly what it was I said, but I believe that I said some absurd thing about that, if I was drowned, he would know that I loved him. But I do know that he kissed me, then and there, while he was holding me up for dear life, in the middle of the river.
"I never fainted till we got ashore, and then I only just dropped off. Charlie carried me right off to my bedroom, and there was a fine to-do. But I wasn't going to stop in bed--not I. I just changed my clothes and went straight downstairs to breakfast, and, after breakfast, I went for another row. And I went for another after lunch, and I got on first rate. Charlie declares that, with practice, I shall make as good an oarswoman as you would care to see; and, after we are married, he's going to teach me swimming--so he says.
"But we're not married yet."
Stacey-Lumpton wanted to go in a cab. I said that a 'bus was good enough for me. He looked me up and down as if I were some inferior kind of animal.
"I'll pay for the cab."
That settled it. I told him that I could not think of allowing such a thing. He brushed a speck of dust off the silk facings of his frockcoat. Then, with his pocket-handkerchief, he brushed the top of one of the fingers of his lemon-coloured kid gloves--where it had touched his coat.
"But I've never travelled in an omnibus."
"In that case it'll be a new sensation, and a new sensation's everything! Read the daily paper--it's the salt of life."
"But all sorts of extraordinary people travel in an omnibus!"
"I should rather think they do. Why, the very last time I was on one the Archbishop of Canterbury sat on the seat in front of me, the Duke of Devonshire was on my right, a person high in favour at Marlborough House was just behind, while there was no one below the rank of a baronet in sight."
He looked at me, as he fumbled for his eyeglass, as if he thought I might be getting at him. Before he could make up his mind a "Walham Green" came lumbering towards us. Stopping it, I hustled Stacey-Lumpton into the road before he in the least understood what was happening.
"Now then, look alive! Here's the very 'bus we want! Jump up!"
I assisted him on to the step. He made as if to go inside. I twisted him towards the stairs. He remonstrated.
"My dear fellow, I really must beg of you to allow me to get inside this omnibus."
"Nonsense. You'll be crushed to death, besides being suffocated alive. There's plenty of room outside. Up you toddle."
I don't know about toddling, but urged, no doubt, to an appreciable degree by the pressure which I exercised from behind, he did begin to mount the stairs gingerly one by one. I followed him. When he was near the top I sang out to the conductor.
"All right!" The conductor stamped his foot. The 'bus started. Then, to Stacey-Lumpton, "Hold tight!"
He held tight just in time. He seemed surprised. "Good gracious! I almost tumbled! The omnibus has started! Tell him to stop at once, I'm falling!"
"Not you. The police won't allow them to stop more than a certain time. They're bound to keep on moving. Shove along."
"This is most dangerous. I'm not used to this kind of thing. And the roof seems full."
"There are two empty seats in front there, just behind the driver--move on."
He moved on after a fashion of his own. He seemed to find the task of preserving his equilibrium, and at the same time of steering his way between the two rows of occupied garden seats, a little difficult. He struck one man upon the head. He seized a lady by her bonnet. He all but thrust the point of his umbrella into another person's eye. He grabbed an old gentleman by the collar of his coat. This method of proceeding tended to make him popular.
"Driver!" exclaimed the old gentleman whom Stacey-Lumpton had grabbed, slightly mistaking the situation, "This person is drunk. He ought not to be allowed in such a condition on an omnibus."
Stacey-Lumpton was too confused to remonstrate. He went floundering on. Presently he kicked against a box which a gentleman of the coster class had placed beside himself on the roof. In trying to recover himself he brought his hand down pretty heavily on its owner's hat. Said owner lost no time in calling his attention to the thing which he had done.
"Where do you think you're a-coming to? I shouldn't be surprised but what you thought this 'bus was made for you. You do that again and I'll send you travelling, and don't you seem to forget it neither."
Stacey-Lumpton had reached a vacant seat at last. I sat beside him. Immediately behind us was the coster. He had taken off his hat and was lovingly examining it. It was an ancient billycock, which had been in somebody's family for several generations. A friend accompanied him.
"If I was you, Jimmy," observed his friend, "I should make that cove pay for your 'at."
"Make 'im pay for it? He ain't got no money. Do 'e look as though 'e 'ad?"
"Well, I should make 'im give yer 'is 'at for yourn. He's bashed your 'at in, ain't 'e?"
Jimmy acted on the hint. Leaning forward, he thrust his reminiscence of a head-covering under Stacey-Lumpton's nose.
"I say, I don't know if you know that you've bashed my 'at in, guv'nor?"
Stacey-Lumpton raised his fingers to his nostrils.
"Take it away, sir--horribly smelling thing."
"Wot are you calling a 'orribly smelling thing? Wot would you say if I was to bash your 'at in?"
"I should bash it in if I was you, Jimmy."
"So I will if 'e don't look out, and so I tell 'im."
The gentleman whose coat had been grabbed still seemed unappeased, and still seemed labouring under a misapprehension.
"Persons who are in an intoxicated condition ought not to be allowed on public conveyances." I turned to Stacey-Lumpton.
"I don't know if you are aware that you almost pulled that gentleman's coat off his back?"
The old gentleman's observations, although addressed to no one in particular, had been audible to all. Twisting himself round in his seat, Stacey-Lumpton proceeded to explain.
"I hope, sir, I didn't hurt you."
The coster chose to take this remark as being addressed to him.
"But you 'urt my 'at! I give fourpence for that 'at not three months ago. 'Ow d'yer suppose I'm going to keep myself in 'ats?"
"If I have been so unfortunate as to damage your hat, sir, I shall be happy to present you with the sum of fourpence with which to provide yourself with another."
Jimmy's friend highly approved of this suggestion. He immediately proceeded to embellish it with an addition of his own.
"That's right. You give 'im fourpence and you give me fourpence. That's what I call be'aving like a gentleman."
Stacey-Lumpton failed quite to follow the line of reasoning.
"Why should I give you fourpence?"
"Why? Because I asks for it. I suppose you can 'ear me. You bashes in my friend's 'at, and I'm 'is friend, and we shares and shares alike. As you treats 'im you treats me. Ain't that right, Jimmy?" Jimmy said it was.
"Quite right, 'Enery--it's quite right. If the gentleman is a gentleman 'e'll give us fourpence apiece--both the two of us. 'E looks a gentleman, don't 'e? 'Is 'at wasn't never bought for fourpence--no, nor for three fourpences neither."
A feminine voice was heard in the rear. It was the lady Stacey-Lumpton had seized by the bonnet; she seemed to have been nursing a grievance.
"And what about me? I suppose it doesn't matter anything at all about me. Oh dear no! I have had my bonnet tore almost off my head, and my hair too, but, of course, I am nobody. If a drunken wretch was to handle some wives some husbands would want to know the reason why. But if I was to be thrown right off the omnibust, and trampled under foot, my husband would sit still and never say a word--oh dear no!"
The husband in question appeared to be a stout individual who, seated by the lady's side, leaned his chin on the handle of an umbrella. He seemed to consider that the remark was, at least, partially addressed to him.
"It was only an accident, Eliza."
"Oh, of course, it was only an accident. Whenever anyone insults me it always is an accident. Some husbands wouldn't say it was an accident, but I have to look after myself, I have." She immediately proceeded to do it. Raising her voice she addressed herself to Stacey-Lumpton. "Young man, I don't know if you happen to be aware that you've scrunched my new bonnet out of shape, and drove a hairpin through my head. Is that the way you always get on omnibuses?"
Stacey-Lumpton was all apologies.
"I beg ten thousand pardons, madam, but the fact is I am not accustomed to travelling on an omnibus, and I'm afraid----"
"Fares, please." The conductor came along cutting the apologies short. "Your fare if you please, sir."
"What is the fare?"
"Arf a crown."
This was Jimmy's friend.
"Where are you going?"
This was the conductor. I explained.
"We want a pennyworth." I turned to Stacey-Lumpton. "I have no coppers. Have you got twopence?"
He produced a sovereign purse.
"Have you change for a sovereign?"
This to the conductor, and the conductor was contemptuous.
"Change for a sovereign! I haven't got change for no sovereign, unless you like to take it all in coppers."
"Take change for a sovereign in coppers? What do you suppose I should do with a sovereign's worth of coppers?"
"I don't know nothing at all about it. I've got to do with 'em, haven't I? Twopence, please!"
Jimmy's friend interposed.
"You 'and me over the sovering. I'll change it. I got sevenpence-'apenny,"
Jimmy chorussed.
"And I dessay I could make it up to a bob, and then we'll take our two 'ats out of it, and then we'll give yer wot's left next time we sees yer--eh, 'Enery?"
The driver, turning his head, nodded to his colleague.
"That's all right, Tom. You give the gentlemen their tickets. I'll see you get your twopence. The gentlemen can owe it me." He gave his whip an artistic twirl. "I've known myself what it's like to have a sovereign and no change to be had--ah, and more than a sovereign, though you mightn't think it to see me here."
Not feeling inclined to be indebted to an omnibus driver for the loan of twopence, I suddenly discovered that I had two coppers. The conductor retired. There was an interval of silence--spent, I imagine, by Stacey-Lumpton in endeavouring to smooth his ruffled plumage. Presently Jimmy's friend began again:
"I say, Jimmy, how about our fourpences?"
"That's what I say. Guv'nor, 'ow about our fourpences? I ain't seen no fourpence."
I tendered Stacey-Lumpton a word of advice.
"If you are wise you will give them nothing."
"I don't intend to."
"Oh, you don't, don't you? Well, that's 'andsome! Now, supposing I bash in your 'at?" All at once he made a fresh discovery. "If 'e ain't smashed the blooming box!" He picked up from beside him the box which Stacey-Lumpton had kicked against. "Smashed it right in--straight, 'e 'as! Well, there's a thing to do!" He thrust the box in question between Stacey-Lumpton and myself. "Look 'ere there's bloaters in that box." We did not need his word to make us conscious of that fact. The perfume was enough. Stacey-Lumpton recognised that this was so with, on his face, an expression of speechless horror. "You've busted in the box and spiled the lot of 'em. Who's going to buy bruised bloaters, I'd like to know? I don't mind my 'at so much, but when it comes to bloaters--they're my living."
An interposition from the lady whose bonnet had been "scrunched."
"Parties like him think no more of taking the bread out of the mouths of the struggling poor than if they was insecks!"
Her husband seemed to think the remark slightly uncalled for.
"That's you, Eliza, all over. You must put your spoke in everybody's wheel. You can't keep quiet, can you?"
"It's as well some of us are like that. Some of us would keep quiet till we was dead. I'm not that sort, I thank goodness."
A gentleman on the seat on the other side of the driver, leaning towards me, proffered a suggestion--his accent was distinctly nasal.
"If I vas your vriend I vould gif him a gopper or two to keep him quiet."
At last Stacey-Lumpton found his voice.
"Take that horrible thing away, man."
"'Orrible thing! Wot are you calling a 'orrible thing? Everythink's a 'orrible thing accordink to you. Don't you come trying no toffs over me, my funny bloke, or you'll soon know."
Thereupon something happened which I had not expected, and which, I am pretty sure, Jimmy had not expected either. Stacey-Lumpton took that box of bloaters in his kid-gloved hands, and in another moment it was lying in the road. He had thrown it overboard. What immediately ensued may be described as larks. I had not anticipated anything of that kind when I had suggested that we should ride outside. Jimmy "went for" Stacey-Lumpton with a full-mouthed imprecation.
"He's took my bloaters ... his eyes!!!"
The driver pulled up. "Now then! now then! what's all this? Might I just inquire? Some of you'll get hurt, you know."
Stacey-Lumpton rose from his seat. He turned. He lifted Jimmy off his feet. Jimmy was one of those half-grown coster lads who in London may be regarded as common objects of the sea-shore. His opponent was twice his size and he was an athlete, although he was a "toff." Lowering Jimmy, in spite of his frantic struggles, over the side of the omnibus, he dropped him on to the street. 'Enery, who also evinced symptoms of violence, went by the same route after his friend. Stacey-Lumpton tossed a sovereign after them.
"Provide yourselves with another box of bloaters and a new hat out of that, my men."
But Jimmy was not to be appeased. His honour had been wounded in its most tender place. Tossing his injured billycock into the mud, he began to tear his coat off his back.
"Come down! Meet me like a man!"
The driver played the part of peacemaker.
"Don't be silly, my lad! The gentleman could swallow you! Pick up your sovereign. You'll never see as much money in your life again." He started his horses. "Good-bye, my little dears. If I was you I'd have a bloater each for tea."
When, having arrived at the end of his first 'bus drive, Stacey-Lumpton found himself on solid ground again, he delivered himself of a sententious observation:
"I fancy that some of the passengers on that omnibus were beneath the rank of a baronet."
I agreed with him. I thought it possible that they were.
Not that I think much of a baronet either.