THREE MEN IN A BOAT
PART 3
CHAPTER IV
The food question .Objections to paraffine oil as an
atmosphere.—Advantages of cheese as a travelling companion.—A married woman
deserts her home.—Further provision for getting upset.—I pack.—Cussedness of
tooth-brushes.—George and Harris pack.—Awful behaviour of Montmorency.—We
retire to rest.
Then we
discussed the food question. George said:
“Begin
with breakfast.” (George is so practical.) “Now for breakfast we
shall want a frying-pan”—(Harris said it was indigestible; but we merely urged
him not to be an ass, and George went on)—“a tea-pot and a kettle, and a
methylated spirit stove.”
“No oil,”
said George, with a significant look; and Harris and I agreed.
We had
taken up an oil-stove once, but “never again.” It had been like living in
an oil-shop that week. It oozed. I never saw such a thing as
paraffine oil is to ooze. We kept it in the nose of the boat, and, from
there, it oozed down to the rudder, impregnating the whole boat and everything
in it on its way, and it oozed over the river, and saturated the scenery and
spoilt the atmosphere. Sometimes a westerly oily wind blew, and at other
times an easterly oily wind, and sometimes it blew a northerly oily wind, and
maybe a southerly oily wind; but whether it came from the Arctic snows, or was
raised in the waste of the desert sands, it came alike to us laden with the
fragrance of paraffine oil.
And that
oil oozed up and ruined the sunset; and as for the moonbeams, they positively
reeked of paraffine.
We tried
to get away from it at Marlow. We left the boat by the bridge, and took a
walk through the town to escape it, but it followed us. The whole town
was full of oil. We passed through the church-yard, and it seemed as if
the people had been buried in oil. The High Street stunk of oil; we
wondered how people could live in it. And we walked miles upon miles out
Birmingham way; but it was no use, the country was steeped in oil.
At the end
of that trip we met together at midnight in a lonely field, under a blasted
oak, and took an awful oath (we had been swearing for a whole week about the
thing in an ordinary, middle-class way, but this was a swell affair)—an awful
oath never to take paraffine oil with us in a boat again-except, of course, in
case of sickness.
Therefore,
in the present instance, we confined ourselves to methylated spirit. Even
that is bad enough. You get methylated pie and methylated cake. But
methylated spirit is more wholesome when taken into the system in large
quantities than paraffine oil.
For other
breakfast things, George suggested eggs and bacon, which were easy to cook,
cold meat, tea, bread and butter, and jam. For lunch, he said, we could
have biscuits, cold meat, bread and butter, and jam—but no cheese.
Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself. It wants the whole boat to
itself. It goes through the hamper, and gives a cheesy flavour to
everything else there. You can’t tell whether you are eating apple-pie or
German sausage, or strawberries and cream. It all seems cheese.
There is too much odour about cheese.
I remember
a friend of mine, buying a couple of cheeses at Liverpool. Splendid
cheeses they were, ripe and mellow, and with a two hundred horse-power scent
about them that might have been warranted to carry three miles, and knock a man
over at two hundred yards. I was in Liverpool at the time, and my friend
said that if I didn’t mind he would get me to take them back with me to London,
as he should not be coming up for a day or two himself, and he did not think
the cheeses ought to be kept much longer.
“Oh, with
pleasure, dear boy,” I replied, “with pleasure.”
I called
for the cheeses, and took them away in a cab. It was a ramshackle affair,
dragged along by a knock-kneed, broken-winded somnambulist, which his owner, in
a moment of enthusiasm, during conversation, referred to as a horse. I put
the cheeses on the top, and we started off at a shamble that would have done
credit to the swiftest steam-roller ever built, and all went merry as a funeral
bell, until we turned the corner. There, the wind carried a whiff from
the cheeses full on to our steed. It woke him up, and, with a snort of
terror, he dashed off at three miles an hour. The wind still blew in his
direction, and before we reached the end of the street he was laying himself
out at the rate of nearly four miles an hour, leaving the cripples and stout
old ladies simply nowhere.
It took
two porters as well as the driver to hold him in at the station; and I do not
think they would have done it, even then, had not one of the men had the
presence of mind to put a handkerchief over his nose, and to light a bit of
brown paper.
I took my
ticket, and marched proudly up the platform, with my cheeses, the people
falling back respectfully on either side. The train was crowded, and I
had to get into a carriage where there were already seven other people.
One crusty old gentleman objected, but I got in, notwithstanding; and, putting
my cheeses upon the rack, squeezed down with a pleasant smile, and said it was
a warm day.
A few
moments passed, and then the old gentleman began to fidget.
“Very close
in here,” he said.
“Quite
oppressive,” said the man next him.
And then
they both began sniffing, and, at the third sniff, they caught it right on the
chest, and rose up without another word and went out. And then a stout
lady got up, and said it was disgraceful that a respectable married woman
should be harried about in this way, and gathered up a bag and eight parcels
and went. The remaining four passengers sat on for a while, until a
solemn-looking man in the corner, who, from his dress and general appearance,
seemed to belong to the undertaker class, said it put him in mind of dead baby;
and the other three passengers tried to get out of the door at the same time,
and hurt themselves.
I smiled
at the black gentleman, and said I thought we were going to have the carriage
to ourselves; and he laughed pleasantly, and said that some people made such a
fuss over a little thing. But even he grew strangely depressed after we
had started, and so, when we reached Crewe, I asked him to come and have a drink.
He accepted, and we forced our way into the buffet, where we yelled, and
stamped, and waved our umbrellas for a quarter of an hour; and then a young
lady came, and asked us if we wanted anything.
“What’s
yours?” I said, turning to my friend.
“I’ll have
half-a-crown’s worth of brandy, neat, if you please, miss,” he responded.
And he
went off quietly after he had drunk it and got into another carriage, which I
thought mean.
From Crewe
I had the compartment to myself, though the train was crowded. As we drew
up at the different stations, the people, seeing my empty carriage, would rush
for it. “Here y’ are, Maria; come along, plenty of room.” “All
right, Tom; we’ll get in here,” they would shout. And they would run
along, carrying heavy bags, and fight round the door to get in first. And
one would open the door and mount the steps, and stagger back into the arms of
the man behind him; and they would all come and have a sniff, and then droop
off and squeeze into other carriages, or pay the difference and go first.
From
Euston, I took the cheeses down to my friend’s house. When his wife came
into the room she smelt round for an instant. Then she said:
“What is
it? Tell me the worst.”
I said:
“It’s
cheeses. Tom bought them in Liverpool, and asked me to bring them up with
me.”
And I
added that I hoped she understood that it had nothing to do with me; and she
said that she was sure of that, but that she would speak to Tom about it when
he came back.
My friend
was detained in Liverpool longer than he expected; and, three days later, as he
hadn’t returned home, his wife called on me. She said:
“What did
Tom say about those cheeses?”
I replied
that he had directed they were to be kept in a moist place, and that nobody was
to touch them.
She said:
“Nobody’s
likely to touch them. Had he smelt them?”
I thought
he had, and added that he seemed greatly attached to them.
“You think
he would be upset,” she queried, “if I gave a man a sovereign to take them away
and bury them?”
I answered
that I thought he would never smile again.
An idea
struck her. She said:
“Do you
mind keeping them for him? Let me send them round to you.”
“Madam,” I
replied, “for myself I like the smell of cheese, and the journey the other day
with them from Liverpool I shall ever look back upon as a happy ending to a
pleasant holiday. But, in this world, we must consider others. The
lady under whose roof I have the honour of residing is a widow, and, for all I
know, possibly an orphan too. She has a strong, I may say an eloquent,
objection to being what she terms ‘put upon.’ The presence of your
husband’s cheeses in her house she would, I instinctively feel, regard as a
‘put upon’; and it shall never be said that I put upon the widow and the
orphan.”
“Very
well, then,” said my friend’s wife, rising, “all I have to say is, that I shall
take the children and go to an hotel until those cheeses are eaten. I
decline to live any longer in the same house with them.”
She kept
her word, leaving the place in charge of the charwoman, who, when asked if she
could stand the smell, replied, “What smell?” and who, when taken close to the
cheeses and told to sniff hard, said she could detect a faint odour of
melons. It was argued from this that little injury could result to the
woman from the atmosphere, and she was left.
The hotel
bill came to fifteen guineas; and my friend, after reckoning everything up,
found that the cheeses had cost him eight-and-sixpence a pound. He said
he dearly loved a bit of cheese, but it was beyond his means; so he determined
to get rid of them. He threw them into the canal; but had to fish them
out again, as the bargemen complained. They said it made them feel quite
faint. And, after that, he took them one dark night and left them in the
parish mortuary. But the coroner discovered them, and made a fearful
fuss.
He said it
was a plot to deprive him of his living by waking up the corpses.
My friend
got rid of them, at last, by taking them down to a sea-side town, and burying
them on the beach. It gained the place quite a reputation. Visitors
said they had never noticed before how strong the air was, and weak-chested and
consumptive people used to throng there for years afterwards.
Fond as I
am of cheese, therefore, I hold that George was right in declining to take any.
“We shan’t
want any tea,” said George (Harris’s face fell at this); “but we’ll have a good
round, square, slap-up meal at seven—dinner, tea, and supper combined.”
Harris
grew more cheerful. George suggested meat and fruit pies, cold meat,
tomatoes, fruit, and green stuff. For drink, we took some wonderful
sticky concoction of Harris’s, which you mixed with water and called lemonade,
plenty of tea, and a bottle of whisky, in case, as George said, we got upset.
It seemed
to me that George harped too much on the getting-upset idea. It seemed to
me the wrong spirit to go about the trip in.
But I’m
glad we took the whisky.
We didn’t
take beer or wine. They are a mistake up the river. They make you
feel sleepy and heavy. A glass in the evening when you are doing a mouch
round the town and looking at the girls is all right enough; but don’t drink
when the sun is blazing down on your head, and you’ve got hard work to do.
We made a
list of the things to be taken, and a pretty lengthy one it was, before we
parted that evening. The next day, which was Friday, we got them all
together, and met in the evening to pack. We got a big Gladstone for the
clothes, and a couple of hampers for the victuals and the cooking
utensils. We moved the table up against the window, piled everything in a
heap in the middle of the floor, and sat round and looked at it.
I said I’d
pack.
I rather
pride myself on my packing. Packing is one of those many things that I
feel I know more about than any other person living. (It surprises me
myself, sometimes, how many of these subjects there are.) I impressed the
fact upon George and Harris, and told them that they had better leave the whole
matter entirely to me. They fell into the suggestion with a readiness
that had something uncanny about it. George put on a pipe and spread
himself over the easy-chair, and Harris cocked his legs on the table and lit a
cigar.
This was
hardly what I intended. What I had meant, of course, was, that I should
boss the job, and that Harris and George should potter about under my
directions, I pushing them aside every now and then with, “Oh, you—!”
“Here, let me do it.” “There you are, simple enough!”—really teaching
them, as you might say. Their taking it in the way they did irritated
me. There is nothing does irritate me more than seeing other people
sitting about doing nothing when I’m working.
I lived
with a man once who used to make me mad that way. He would loll on the
sofa and watch me doing things by the hour together, following me round the
room with his eyes, wherever I went. He said it did him real good to look
on at me, messing about. He said it made him feel that life was not an
idle dream to be gaped and yawned through, but a noble task, full of duty and
stern work. He said he often wondered now how he could have gone on
before he met me, never having anybody to look at while they worked.
Now, I’m
not like that. I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and
working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands
in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature.
I can’t help it.
However, I
did not say anything, but started the packing. It seemed a longer job
than I had thought it was going to be; but I got the bag finished at last, and
I sat on it and strapped it.
“Ain’t you
going to put the boots in?” said Harris.
And I
looked round, and found I had forgotten them. That’s just like
Harris. He couldn’t have said a word until I’d got the bag shut and
strapped, of course. And George laughed—one of those irritating,
senseless, chuckle-headed, crack-jawed laughs of his. They do make me so
wild.
I opened
the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as I was going to close it, a
horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my tooth-brush? I don’t
know how it is, but I never do know whether I’ve packed my tooth-brush.
My
tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I’m travelling, and makes my life a
misery. I dream that I haven’t packed it, and wake up in a cold
perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I
pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is
always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I repack and forget it,
and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment and carry it to the railway
station, wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief.
Of course
I had to turn every mortal thing out now, and, of course, I could not find
it. I rummaged the things up into much the same state that they must have
been before the world was created, and when chaos reigned. Of course, I
found George’s and Harris’s eighteen times over, but I couldn’t find my
own. I put the things back one by one, and held everything up and shook
it. Then I found it inside a boot. I repacked once more.
When I had
finished, George asked if the soap was in. I said I didn’t care a hang
whether the soap was in or whether it wasn’t; and I slammed the bag to and
strapped it, and found that I had packed my tobacco-pouch in it, and had to
re-open it. It got shut up finally at 10.5 p.m., and then there remained
the hampers to do. Harris said that we should be wanting to start in less
than twelve hours’ time, and thought that he and George had better do the rest;
and I agreed and sat down, and they had a go.
They began
in a light-hearted spirit, evidently intending to show me how to do it. I
made no comment; I only waited. When George is hanged, Harris will be the
worst packer in this world; and I looked at the piles of plates and cups, and
kettles, and bottles and jars, and pies, and stoves, and cakes, and tomatoes,
&c., and felt that the thing would soon become exciting.
It
did. They started with breaking a cup. That was the first thing
they did. They did that just to show you what they could do, and
to get you interested.
Then Harris
packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato and squashed it, and they had to
pick out the tomato with a teaspoon.
And then
it was George’s turn, and he trod on the butter. I didn’t say anything,
but I came over and sat on the edge of the table and watched them. It
irritated them more than anything I could have said. I felt that.
It made them nervous and excited, and they stepped on things, and put things
behind them, and then couldn’t find them when they wanted them; and they packed
the pies at the bottom, and put heavy things on top, and smashed the pies in.
They upset
salt over everything, and as for the butter! I never saw two men do more
with one-and-twopence worth of butter in my whole life than they did.
After George had got it off his slipper, they tried to put it in the
kettle. It wouldn’t go in, and what was in wouldn’t come
out. They did scrape it out at last, and put it down on a chair, and
Harris sat on it, and it stuck to him, and they went looking for it all over
the room.
“I’ll take
my oath I put it down on that chair,” said George, staring at the empty seat.
“I saw you
do it myself, not a minute ago,” said Harris.
Then they
started round the room again looking for it; and then they met again in the
centre, and stared at one another.
“Most
extraordinary thing I ever heard of,” said George.
“So
mysterious!” said Harris.
Then
George got round at the back of Harris and saw it.
“Why, here
it is all the time,” he exclaimed, indignantly.
“Where?”
cried Harris, spinning round.
“Stand
still, can’t you!” roared George, flying after him.
And they
got it off, and packed it in the teapot.
Montmorency
was in it all, of course. Montmorency’s ambition in life, is to get in
the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he
particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make people mad, and
have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day has not been wasted.
To get
somebody to stumble over him, and curse him steadily for an hour, is his
highest aim and object; and, when he has succeeded in accomplishing this, his
conceit becomes quite unbearable.
He came
and sat down on things, just when they were wanted to be packed; and he
laboured under the fixed belief that, whenever Harris or George reached out
their hand for anything, it was his cold, damp nose that they wanted. He
put his leg into the jam, and he worried the teaspoons, and he pretended that
the lemons were rats, and got into the hamper and killed three of them before
Harris could land him with the frying-pan.
Harris
said I encouraged him. I didn’t encourage him. A dog like that
don’t want any encouragement. It’s the natural, original sin that is born
in him that makes him do things like that.
The
packing was done at 12.50; and Harris sat on the big hamper, and said he hoped
nothing would be found broken. George said that if anything was broken it
was broken, which reflection seemed to comfort him. He also said he was
ready for bed. We were all ready for bed. Harris was to sleep with
us that night, and we went upstairs.
We tossed
for beds, and Harris had to sleep with me. He said:
“Do you
prefer the inside or the outside, J.?”
I said I
generally preferred to sleep inside a bed.
Harris
said it was old.
George
said:
“What time
shall I wake you fellows?”
Harris
said:
“Seven.”
I said:
“No—six,”
because I wanted to write some letters.
Harris and
I had a bit of a row over it, but at last split the difference, and said
half-past six.
“Wake us
at 6.30, George,” we said.
George
made no answer, and we found, on going over, that he had been asleep for some
time; so we placed the bath where he could tumble into it on getting out in the
morning, and went to bed ourselves.
To be continued, much refreshed
