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.
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