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.
CHAPTER V.
MRS. P. AROUSES US. - GEORGE, THE SLUGGARD. - THE "WEATHER FORECAST"
SWINDLE. - OUR LUGGAGE. - DEPRAVITY OF THE SMALL BOY. - THE PEOPLE GATHER
ROUND US. - WE DRIVE OFF IN GREAT STYLE, AND ARRIVE AT WATERLOO. -
INNOCENCE OF SOUTH WESTERN OFFICIALS CONCERNING SUCH WORLDLY THINGS AS
TRAINS. - WE ARE AFLOAT, AFLOAT IN AN OPEN BOAT.
IT was Mrs. Poppets that woke me up next morning.
She said:
"Do you know that it's nearly nine o'clock, sir?"
"Nine o' what?" I cried, starting up.
"Nine o'clock," she replied, through the keyhole. "I thought you was a-
oversleeping yourselves."
I woke Harris, and told him. He said:
"I thought you wanted to get up at six?"
"So I did," I answered; "why didn't you wake me?"
"How could I wake you, when you didn't wake me?" he retorted. "Now we
shan't get on the water till after twelve. I wonder you take the trouble
to get up at all."
"Um," I replied, "lucky for you that I do. If I hadn't woke you, you'd
have lain there for the whole fortnight."
We snarled at one another in this strain for the next few minutes, when
we were interrupted by a defiant snore from George.
It reminded us, for the first time since our being called, of his
existence.
There he lay - the man who had wanted to know what time he should wake us
- on his back, with his mouth wide open, and his knees stuck up.
I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man
asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me. It seems to me so shocking to
see the precious hours of a man's life - the priceless moments that will
never come back to him again - being wasted in mere brutish sleep.
There was George, throwing away in hideous sloth the inestimable gift of
time; his valuable life, every second of which he would have to account
for hereafter, passing away from him, unused. He might have been up
stuffing himself with eggs and bacon, irritating the dog, or flirting
with the slavey, instead of sprawling there, sunk in soul-clogging
oblivion.
It was a terrible thought. Harris and I appeared to be struck by it at
the same instant. We determined to save him, and, in this noble resolve,
our own dispute was forgotten. We flew across and slung the clothes off
him, and Harris landed him one with a slipper, and I shouted in his ear,
and he awoke.
"Wasermarrer?" he observed, sitting up.
"Get up, you fat-headed chunk!" roared Harris. "It's quarter to ten."
"What!" he shrieked, jumping out of bed into the bath; "Who the thunder
put this thing here?"
We told him he must have been a fool not to see the bath.
We finished dressing, and, when it came to the extras, we remembered that
we had packed the tooth-brushes and the brush and comb (that tooth-brush
of mine will be the death of me, I know), and we had to go downstairs,
and fish them out of the bag.
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