THREE MEN IN A BOAT
PART 10
CHAPTER XI.
How George, once upon a time, got up early in the morning.—George,
Harris, and Montmorency do not like the look of the cold water.—Heroism and
determination on the part of J.—George and his shirt: story with a
moral.—Harris as cook.—Historical retrospect, specially inserted for the use of
schools.
I woke at
six the next morning; and found George awake too. We both turned round,
and tried to go to sleep again, but we could not. Had there been any
particular reason why we should not have gone to sleep again, but have got up
and dressed then and there, we should have dropped off while we were looking at
our watches, and have slept till ten. As there was no earthly necessity
for our getting up under another two hours at the very least, and our getting
up at that time was an utter absurdity, it was only in keeping with the natural
cussedness of things in general that we should both feel that lying down for
five minutes more would be death to us.
George
said that the same kind of thing, only worse, had happened to him some eighteen
months ago, when he was lodging by himself in the house of a certain Mrs.
Gippings. He said his watch went wrong one evening, and stopped at a
quarter-past eight. He did not know this at the time because, for some
reason or other, he forgot to wind it up when he went to bed (an unusual
occurrence with him), and hung it up over his pillow without ever looking at
the thing.
It was in
the winter when this happened, very near the shortest day, and a week of fog
into the bargain, so the fact that it was still very dark when George woke in
the morning was no guide to him as to the time. He reached up, and hauled
down his watch. It was a quarter-past eight.
“Angels
and ministers of grace defend us!” exclaimed George; “and here have I got to be
in the City by nine. Why didn’t somebody call me? Oh, this is a
shame!” And he flung the watch down, and sprang out of bed, and had a
cold bath, and washed himself, and dressed himself, and shaved himself in cold
water because there was not time to wait for the hot, and then rushed and had
another look at the watch.
Whether
the shaking it had received in being thrown down on the bed had started it, or
how it was, George could not say, but certain it was that from a quarter-past
eight it had begun to go, and now pointed to twenty minutes to nine.
George
snatched it up, and rushed downstairs. In the sitting-room, all was dark
and silent: there was no fire, no breakfast. George said it was a wicked
shame of Mrs. G., and he made up his mind to tell her what he thought of her
when he came home in the evening. Then he dashed on his great-coat and
hat, and, seizing his umbrella, made for the front door. The door was not
even unbolted. George anathematized Mrs. G. for a lazy old woman, and
thought it was very strange that people could not get up at a decent,
respectable time, unlocked and unbolted the door, and ran out.
He ran
hard for a quarter of a mile, and at the end of that distance it began to be
borne in upon him as a strange and curious thing that there were so few people
about, and that there were no shops open. It was certainly a very dark
and foggy morning, but still it seemed an unusual course to stop all business
on that account. He had to go to business: why should other people
stop in bed merely because it was dark and foggy!
At length
he reached Holborn. Not a shutter was down! not a bus was about!
There were three men in sight, one of whom was a policeman; a market-cart full
of cabbages, and a dilapidated looking cab. George pulled out his watch
and looked at it: it was five minutes to nine! He stood still and counted
his pulse. He stooped down and felt his legs. Then, with his watch
still in his hand, he went up to the policeman, and asked him if he knew what
the time was.
“What’s the time?” said the man, eyeing George
up and down with evident suspicion; “why, if you listen you will hear it
strike.”
George
listened, and a neighbouring clock immediately obliged.
“But it’s
only gone three!” said George in an injured tone, when it had finished.
“Well, and
how many did you want it to go?” replied the constable.
“Why,
nine,” said George, showing his watch.
“Do you
know where you live?” said the guardian of public order, severely.
George
thought, and gave the address.
“Oh!
that’s where it is, is it?” replied the man; “well, you take my advice and go
there quietly, and take that watch of yours with you; and don’t let’s have any
more of it.”
And George
went home again, musing as he walked along, and let himself in.
At first,
when he got in, he determined to undress and go to bed again; but when he
thought of the redressing and re-washing, and the having of another bath, he
determined he would not, but would sit up and go to sleep in the easy-chair.
But he
could not get to sleep: he never felt more wakeful in his life; so he lit the
lamp and got out the chess-board, and played himself a game of chess. But
even that did not enliven him: it seemed slow somehow; so he gave chess up and
tried to read. He did not seem able to take any sort of interest in
reading either, so he put on his coat again and went out for a walk.
It was
horribly lonesome and dismal, and all the policemen he met regarded him with
undisguised suspicion, and turned their lanterns on him and followed him about,
and this had such an effect upon him at last that he began to feel as if he
really had done something, and he got to slinking down the by-streets and
hiding in dark doorways when he heard the regulation flip-flop approaching.
Of course,
this conduct made the force only more distrustful of him than ever, and they
would come and rout him out and ask him what he was doing there; and when he
answered, “Nothing,” he had merely come out for a stroll (it was then four
o’clock in the morning), they looked as though they did not believe him, and
two plain-clothes constables came home with him to see if he really did live
where he had said he did. They saw him go in with his key, and then they
took up a position opposite and watched the house.
He thought
he would light the fire when he got inside, and make himself some breakfast,
just to pass away the time; but he did not seem able to handle anything from a
scuttleful of coals to a teaspoon without dropping it or falling over it, and
making such a noise that he was in mortal fear that it would wake Mrs. G. up,
and that she would think it was burglars and open the window and call “Police!”
and then these two detectives would rush in and handcuff him, and march him off
to the police-court.
He was in
a morbidly nervous state by this time, and he pictured the trial, and his trying
to explain the circumstances to the jury, and nobody believing him, and his
being sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude, and his mother dying of a
broken heart. So he gave up trying to get breakfast, and wrapped himself
up in his overcoat and sat in the easy-chair till Mrs. G came down at half-past
seven.
He said he
had never got up too early since that morning: it had been such a warning to
him.
We had
been sitting huddled up in our rugs while George had been telling me this true
story, and on his finishing it I set to work to wake up Harris with a
scull. The third prod did it: and he turned over on the other side, and
said he would be down in a minute, and that he would have his lace-up
boots. We soon let him know where he was, however, by the aid of the
hitcher, and he sat up suddenly, sending Montmorency, who had been sleeping the
sleep of the just right on the middle of his chest, sprawling across the boat.
Then we
pulled up the canvas, and all four of us poked our heads out over the off-side,
and looked down at the water and shivered. The idea, overnight, had been
that we should get up early in the morning, fling off our rugs and shawls, and,
throwing back the canvas, spring into the river with a joyous shout, and revel
in a long delicious swim. Somehow, now the morning had come, the notion
seemed less tempting. The water looked damp and chilly: the wind felt
cold.
“Well,
who’s going to be first in?” said Harris at last.
There was
no rush for precedence. George settled the matter so far as he was
concerned by retiring into the boat and pulling on his socks. Montmorency
gave vent to an involuntary howl, as if merely thinking of the thing had given
him the horrors; and Harris said it would be so difficult to get into the boat again,
and went back and sorted out his trousers.
I did not
altogether like to give in, though I did not relish the plunge. There
might be snags about, or weeds, I thought. I meant to compromise matters
by going down to the edge and just throwing the water over myself; so I took a
towel and crept out on the bank and wormed my way along on to the branch of a
tree that dipped down into the water.
It was
bitterly cold. The wind cut like a knife. I thought I would not
throw the water over myself after all. I would go back into the boat and
dress; and I turned to do so; and, as I turned, the silly branch gave way, and
I and the towel went in together with a tremendous splash, and I was out
mid-stream with a gallon of Thames water inside me before I knew what had happened.
“By Jove!
old J.’s gone in,” I heard Harris say, as I came blowing to the surface.
“I didn’t think he’d have the pluck to do it. Did you?”
“Is it all
right?” sung out George.
“Lovely,”
I spluttered back. “You are duffers not to come in. I wouldn’t have
missed this for worlds. Why won’t you try it? It only wants a
little determination.”
But I
could not persuade them.
Rather an
amusing thing happened while dressing that morning. I was very cold when
I got back into the boat, and, in my hurry to get my shirt on, I accidentally
jerked it into the water. It made me awfully wild, especially as George
burst out laughing. I could not see anything to laugh at, and I told
George so, and he only laughed the more. I never saw a man laugh so
much. I quite lost my temper with him at last, and I pointed out to him
what a drivelling maniac of an imbecile idiot he was; but he only roared the
louder. And then, just as I was landing the shirt, I noticed that it was
not my shirt at all, but George’s, which I had mistaken for mine; whereupon the
humour of the thing struck me for the first time, and I began to laugh.
And the more I looked from George’s wet shirt to George, roaring with laughter,
the more I was amused, and I laughed so much that I had to let the shirt fall
back into the water again.
“Ar’n’t
you—you—going to get it out?” said George, between his shrieks.
I could
not answer him at all for a while, I was laughing so, but, at last, between my
peals I managed to jerk out:
“It isn’t
my shirt—it’s yours!”
I never
saw a man’s face change from lively to severe so suddenly in all my life
before.
“What!” he
yelled, springing up. “You silly cuckoo! Why can’t you be more
careful what you’re doing? Why the deuce don’t you go and dress on the
bank? You’re not fit to be in a boat, you’re not. Gimme the
hitcher.”
I tried to
make him see the fun of the thing, but he could not. George is very dense
at seeing a joke sometimes.
Harris
proposed that we should have scrambled eggs for breakfast. He said he
would cook them. It seemed, from his account, that he was very good at
doing scrambled eggs. He often did them at picnics and when out on
yachts. He was quite famous for them. People who had once tasted
his scrambled eggs, so we gathered from his conversation, never cared for any
other food afterwards, but pined away and died when they could not get them.
It made
our mouths water to hear him talk about the things, and we handed him out the
stove and the frying-pan and all the eggs that had not smashed and gone over
everything in the hamper, and begged him to begin.
He had
some trouble in breaking the eggs—or rather not so much trouble in breaking
them exactly as in getting them into the frying-pan when broken, and keeping
them off his trousers, and preventing them from running up his sleeve; but he
fixed some half-a-dozen into the pan at last, and then squatted down by the
side of the stove and chivied them about with a fork.
It seemed
harassing work, so far as George and I could judge. Whenever he went near
the pan he burned himself, and then he would drop everything and dance round
the stove, flicking his fingers about and cursing the things. Indeed,
every time George and I looked round at him he was sure to be performing this
feat. We thought at first that it was a necessary part of the culinary
arrangements.
We did not
know what scrambled eggs were, and we fancied that it must be some Red Indian
or Sandwich Islands sort of dish that required dances and incantations for its
proper cooking. Montmorency went and put his nose over it once, and the
fat spluttered up and scalded him, and then he began dancing and
cursing. Altogether it was one of the most interesting and exciting
operations I have ever witnessed. George and I were both quite sorry when
it was over.
The result
was not altogether the success that Harris had anticipated. There seemed
so little to show for the business. Six eggs had gone into the
frying-pan, and all that came out was a teaspoonful of burnt and unappetizing
looking mess.
Harris
said it was the fault of the frying-pan, and thought it would have gone better
if we had had a fish-kettle and a gas-stove; and we decided not to attempt the
dish again until we had those aids to housekeeping by us.
The sun
had got more powerful by the time we had finished breakfast, and the wind had
dropped, and it was as lovely a morning as one could desire. Little was
in sight to remind us of the nineteenth century; and, as we looked out upon the
river in the morning sunlight, we could almost fancy that the centuries between
us and that ever-to-be-famous June morning of 1215 had been drawn aside, and
that we, English yeomen’s sons in homespun cloth, with dirk at belt, were
waiting there to witness the writing of that stupendous page of history, the
meaning whereof was to be translated to the common people some four hundred and
odd years later by one Oliver Cromwell, who had deeply studied it.
It is a
fine summer morning—sunny, soft, and still. But through the air there
runs a thrill of coming stir. King John has slept at Duncroft Hall, and
all the day before the little town of Staines has echoed to the clang of armed
men, and the clatter of great horses over its rough stones, and the shouts of
captains, and the grim oaths and surly jests of bearded bowmen, billmen,
pikemen, and strange-speaking foreign spearmen.
Gay-cloaked
companies of knights and squires have ridden in, all travel-stained and
dusty. And all the evening long the timid townsmen’s doors have had to be
quick opened to let in rough groups of soldiers, for whom there must be found
both board and lodging, and the best of both, or woe betide the house and all
within; for the sword is judge and jury, plaintiff and executioner, in these
tempestuous times, and pays for what it takes by sparing those from whom it
takes it, if it pleases it to do so.
Round the
camp-fire in the market-place gather still more of the Barons’ troops, and eat
and drink deep, and bellow forth roystering drinking songs, and gamble and
quarrel as the evening grows and deepens into night. The firelight sheds
quaint shadows on their piled-up arms and on their uncouth forms. The
children of the town steal round to watch them, wondering; and brawny country
wenches, laughing, draw near to bandy ale-house jest and jibe with the swaggering
troopers, so unlike the village swains, who, now despised, stand apart behind,
with vacant grins upon their broad, peering faces. And out from the
fields around, glitter the faint lights of more distant camps, as here some
great lord’s followers lie mustered, and there false John’s French mercenaries
hover like crouching wolves without the town.
And so,
with sentinel in each dark street, and twinkling watch-fires on each height
around, the night has worn away, and over this fair valley of old Thame has
broken the morning of the great day that is to close so big with the fate of
ages yet unborn.
Ever since
grey dawn, in the lower of the two islands, just above where we are standing,
there has been great clamour, and the sound of many workmen. The great
pavilion brought there yester eve is being raised, and carpenters are busy
nailing tiers of seats, while ’prentices from London town are there with
many-coloured stuffs and silks and cloth of gold and silver.
And now,
lo! down upon the road that winds along the river’s bank from Staines there
come towards us, laughing and talking together in deep guttural bass, a
half-a-score of stalwart halbert-men—Barons’ men, these—and halt at a hundred
yards or so above us, on the other bank, and lean upon their arms, and wait.
And so,
from hour to hour, march up along the road ever fresh groups and bands of armed
men, their casques and breastplates flashing back the long low lines of morning
sunlight, until, as far as eye can reach, the way seems thick with glittering
steel and prancing steeds. And shouting horsemen are galloping from group
to group, and little banners are fluttering lazily in the warm breeze, and
every now and then there is a deeper stir as the ranks make way on either side,
and some great Baron on his war-horse, with his guard of squires around him,
passes along to take his station at the head of his serfs and vassals.
And up the
slope of Cooper’s Hill, just opposite, are gathered the wondering rustics and
curious townsfolk, who have run from Staines, and none are quite sure what the
bustle is about, but each one has a different version of the great event that
they have come to see; and some say that much good to all the people will come
from this day’s work; but the old men shake their heads, for they have heard
such tales before.
And all
the river down to Staines is dotted with small craft and boats and tiny
coracles—which last are growing out of favour now, and are used only by the
poorer folk. Over the rapids, where in after years trim Bell Weir lock
will stand, they have been forced or dragged by their sturdy rowers, and now
are crowding up as near as they dare come to the great covered barges, which
lie in readiness to bear King John to where the fateful Charter waits his
signing.
It is
noon, and we and all the people have been waiting patient for many an hour, and
the rumour has run round that slippery John has again escaped from the Barons’
grasp, and has stolen away from Duncroft Hall with his mercenaries at his
heels, and will soon be doing other work than signing charters for his people’s
liberty.
Not
so! This time the grip upon him has been one of iron, and he has slid and
wriggled in vain. Far down the road a little cloud of dust has risen, and
draws nearer and grows larger, and the pattering of many hoofs grows louder,
and in and out between the scattered groups of drawn-up men, there pushes on
its way a brilliant cavalcade of gay-dressed lords and knights. And front
and rear, and either flank, there ride the yeomen of the Barons, and in the
midst King John.
He rides
to where the barges lie in readiness, and the great Barons step forth from
their ranks to meet him. He greets them with a smile and laugh, and
pleasant honeyed words, as though it were some feast in his honour to which he
had been invited. But as he rises to dismount, he casts one hurried
glance from his own French mercenaries drawn up in the rear to the grim ranks
of the Barons’ men that hem him in.
Is it too
late? One fierce blow at the unsuspecting horseman at his side, one cry
to his French troops, one desperate charge upon the unready lines before him,
and these rebellious Barons might rue the day they dared to thwart his
plans! A bolder hand might have turned the game even at that point.
Had it been a Richard there! the cup of liberty might have been dashed from
England’s lips, and the taste of freedom held back for a hundred years.
But the
heart of King John sinks before the stern faces of the English fighting men,
and the arm of King John drops back on to his rein, and he dismounts and takes
his seat in the foremost barge. And the Barons follow in, with each
mailed hand upon the sword-hilt, and the word is given to let go.
Slowly the
heavy, bright-decked barges leave the shore of Runningmede. Slowly
against the swift current they work their ponderous way, till, with a low
grumble, they grate against the bank of the little island that from this day
will bear the name of Magna Charta Island. And King John has stepped upon
the shore, and we wait in breathless silence till a great shout cleaves the
air, and the great cornerstone in England’s temple of liberty has, now we know,
been firmly laid.
To be continued
