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.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32