Three men on the bummel - Chapter Iv - (2)

We caught the train by the skin of our teeth, as the saying is, and reflecting upon the events of the morning, as we sat gasping in the carriage, there passed vividly before my mind the panorama of my Uncle Podger, as on two hundred and fifty days in the year he would start from Ealing Common by the nine-thirteen train to Moorgate Street.
    From my Uncle Podger's house to the railway station was eight minutes' walk. What my uncle always said was:
    "Allow yourself a quarter of an hour, and take it easily."
    What he always did was to start five minutes before the time and run. I do not know why, but this was the custom of the suburb. Many stout City gentlemen lived at Ealing in those days--I believe some live there still--and caught early trains to Town. They all started late; they all carried a black bag and a newspaper in one hand, and an umbrella in the other; and for the last quarter of a mile to the station, wet or fine, they all ran.
    Folks with nothing else to do, nursemaids chiefly and errand boys, with now and then a perambulating costermonger added, would gather on the common of a fine morning to watch them pass, and cheer the most deserving. It was not a showy spectacle. They did not run well, they did not even run fast; but they were earnest, and they did their best. The exhibition appealed less to one's sense of art than to one's natural admiration for conscientious effort.
    Occasionally a little harmless betting would take place among the crowd.
    "Two to one agin the old gent in the white weskit!"
    "Ten to one on old Blowpipes, bar he don't roll over hisself 'fore 'e gets there!"
    "Heven money on the Purple Hemperor!"--a nickname bestowed by a youth of entomological tastes upon a certain retired military neighbour of my uncle's,--a gentleman of imposing appearance when stationary, but apt to colour highly under exercise.
    My uncle and the others would write to the Ealing Press complaining bitterly concerning the supineness of the local police; and the editor would add spirited leaders upon the Decay of Courtesy among the Lower Orders, especially throughout the Western Suburbs. But no good ever resulted.
    It was not that my uncle did not rise early enough; it was that troubles came to him at the last moment. The first thing he would do after breakfast would be to lose his newspaper. We always knew when Uncle Podger had lost anything, by the expression of astonished indignation with which, on such occasions, he would regard the world in general. It never occurred to my Uncle Podger to say to himself:
    "I am a careless old man. I lose everything: I never know where I have put anything. I am quite incapable of finding it again for myself. In this respect I must be a perfect nuisance to everybody about me. I must set to work and reform myself."
    On the contrary, by some peculiar course of reasoning, he had convinced himself that whenever he lost a thing it was everybody else's fault in the house but his own.
    "I had it in my hand here not a minute ago!" he would exclaim.
    From his tone you would have thought he was living surrounded by conjurers, who spirited away things from him merely to irritate him.
    "Could you have left it in the garden?" my aunt would suggest.
    "What should I want to leave it in the garden for? I don't want a paper in the garden; I want the paper in the train with me."
    "You haven't put it in your pocket?"
    "God bless the woman! Do you think I should be standing here at five minutes to nine looking for it if I had it in my pocket all the while? Do you think I'm a fool?"
    Here somebody would explain, "What's this?" and hand him from somewhere a paper neatly folded.
    "I do wish people would leave my things alone," he would growl, snatching at it savagely.
    He would open his bag to put it in, and then glancing at it, he would pause, speechless with sense of injury.
    "What's the matter?" aunt would ask.
    "The day before yesterday's!" he would answer, too hurt even to shout, throwing the paper down upon the table.
    If only sometimes it had been yesterday's it would have been a change. But it was always the day before yesterday's; except on Tuesday; then it would be Saturday's.
    We would find it for him eventually; as often as not he was sitting on it. And then he would smile, not genially, but with the weariness that comes to a man who feels that fate has cast his lot among a band of hopeless idiots.
    "All the time, right in front of your noses--!" He would not finish the sentence; he prided himself on his self-control.
    This settled, he would start for the hall, where it was the custom of my Aunt Maria to have the children gathered, ready to say good-bye to him.
    My aunt never left the house herself, if only to make a call next door, without taking a tender farewell of every inmate. One never knew, she would say, what might happen.
    One of them, of course, was sure to be missing, and the moment this was noticed all the other six, without an instant's hesitation, would scatter with a whoop to find it. Immediately they were gone it would turn up by itself from somewhere quite near, always with the most reasonable explanation for its absence; and would at once start off after the others to explain to them that it was found. In this way, five minutes at least would be taken up in everybody's looking for everybody else, which was just sufficient time to allow my uncle to find his umbrella and lose his hat. Then, at last, the group reassembled in the hall, the drawing-room clock would commence to strike nine. It possessed a cold, penetrating chime that always had the effect of confusing my uncle. In his excitement he would kiss some of the children twice over, pass by others, forget whom he had kissed and whom he hadn't, and have to begin all over again. He used to say he believed they mixed themselves up on purpose, and I am not prepared to maintain that the charge was altogether false. To add to his troubles, one child always had a sticky face; and that child would always be the most affectionate.
    If things were going too smoothly, the eldest boy would come out with some tale about all the clocks in the house being five minutes slow, and of his having been late for school the previous day in consequence. This would send my uncle rushing impetuously down to the gate, where he would recollect that he had with him neither his bag nor his umbrella. All the children that my aunt could not stop would charge after him, two of them struggling for the umbrella, the others surging round the bag. And when they returned we would discover on the hall table the most important thing of all that he had forgotten, and wondered what he would say about it when he came home.
    We arrived at Waterloo a little after nine, and at once proceeded to put George's experiment into operation. Opening the book at the chapter entitled "At the Cab Rank," we walked up to a hansom, raised our hats, and wished the driver "Good-morning."
    This man was not to be outdone in politeness by any foreigner, real or imitation. Calling to a friend named "Charles" to "hold the steed," he sprang from his box, and returned to us a bow, that would have done credit to Mr. Turveydrop himself. Speaking apparently in the name of the nation, he welcomed us to England, adding a regret that Her Majesty was not at the moment in London.
    We could not reply to him in kind. Nothing of this sort had been anticipated by the book. We called him "coachman," at which he again bowed to the pavement, and asked him if he would have the goodness to drive us to the Westminster Bridge road.
    He laid his hand upon his heart, and said the pleasure would be his.
    Taking the third sentence in the chapter, George asked him what his fare would be.
    The question, as introducing a sordid element into the conversation, seemed to hurt his feelings. He said he never took money from distinguished strangers; he suggested a souvenir--a diamond scarf pin, a gold snuffbox, some little trifle of that sort by which he could remember us.
    As a small crowd had collected, and as the joke was drifting rather too far in the cabman's direction, we climbed in without further parley, and were driven away amid cheers. We stopped the cab at a boot shop a little past Astley's Theatre that looked the sort of place we wanted. It was one of those overfed shops that the moment their shutters are taken down in the morning disgorge their goods all round them. Boxes of boots stood piled on the pavement or in the gutter opposite. Boots hung in festoons about its doors and windows. Its sun-blind was as some grimy vine, bearing bunches of black and brown boots. Inside, the shop was a bower of boots. The man, when we entered, was busy with a chisel and hammer opening a new crate full of boots.
    George raised his hat, and said "Good-morning."
    The man did not even turn round. He struck me from the first as a disagreeable man. He grunted something which might have been "Good-morning," or might not, and went on with his work.
    George said: "I have been recommended to your shop by my friend, Mr. X."
    In response, the man should have said: "Mr. X. is a most worthy gentleman; it will give me the greatest pleasure to serve any friend of his."
    What he did say was: "Don't know him; never heard of him."
    This was disconcerting. The book gave three or four methods of buying boots; George had carefully selected the one centred round "Mr. X," as being of all the most courtly. You talked a good deal with the shopkeeper about this "Mr. X," and then, when by this means friendship and understanding had been established, you slid naturally and gracefully into the immediate object of your coming, namely, your desire for boots, "cheap and good." This gross, material man cared, apparently, nothing for the niceties of retail dealing. It was necessary with such an one to come to business with brutal directness. George abandoned "Mr. X," and turning back to a previous page, took a sentence at random. It was not a happy selection; it was a speech that would have been superfluous made to any bootmaker. Under the present circumstances, threatened and stifled as we were on every side by boots, it possessed the dignity of positive imbecility. It ran:--"One has told me that you have here boots for sale."
    For the first time the man put down his hammer and chisel, and looked at us. He spoke slowly, in a thick and husky voice. He said:
    "What d'ye think I keep boots for--to smell 'em?"
    He was one of those men that begin quietly and grow more angry as they proceed, their wrongs apparently working within them like yeast.
    "What d'ye think I am," he continued, "a boot collector? What d'ye think I'm running this shop for--my health? D'ye think I love the boots, and can't bear to part with a pair? D'ye think I hang 'em about here to look at 'em? Ain't there enough of 'em? Where d'ye think you are--in an international exhibition of boots? What d'ye think these boots are--a historical collection? Did you ever hear of a man keeping a boot shop and not selling boots? D'ye think I decorate the shop with 'em to make it look pretty? What d'ye take me for--a prize idiot?"
    I have always maintained that these conversation books are never of any real use. What we wanted was some English equivalent for the well-known German idiom: "Behalten Sie Ihr Haar auf."
    Nothing of the sort was to be found in the book from beginning to end. However, I will do George the credit to admit he chose the very best sentence that was to be found therein and applied it. He said:
    "I will come again, when, perhaps, you will have some more boots to show me. Till then, adieu!"
    With that we returned to our cab and drove away, leaving the man standing in the centre of his boot-bedecked doorway addressing remarks to us. What he said, I did not hear, but the passers-by appeared to find it interesting.
    George was for stopping at another boot shop and trying the experiment afresh; he said he really did want a pair of bedroom slippers. But we persuaded him to postpone their purchase until our arrival in some foreign city, where the tradespeople are no doubt more inured to this sort of talk, or else more naturally amiable. On the subject of the hat, however, he was adamant. He maintained that without that he could not travel, and, accordingly, we pulled up at a small shop in the Blackfriars Road.
    The proprietor of this shop was a cheery, bright-eyed little man, and he helped us rather than hindered us.
    When George asked him in the words of the book, "Have you any hats?" he did not get angry; he just stopped and thoughtfully scratched his chin.
    "Hats," said he. "Let me think. Yes"--here a smile of positive pleasure broke over his genial countenance--"yes, now I come to think of it, I believe I have a hat. But, tell me, why do you ask me?"
    George explained to him that he wished to purchase a cap, a travelling cap, but the essence of the transaction was that it was to be a "good cap."
    The man's face fell.
    "Ah," he remarked, "there, I am afraid, you have me. Now, if you had wanted a bad cap, not worth the price asked for it; a cap good for nothing but to clean windows with, I could have found you the very thing. But a good cap--no; we don't keep them. But wait a minute," he continued,--on seeing the disappointment that spread over George's expressive countenance, "don't be in a hurry. I have a cap here"--he went to a drawer and opened it--"it is not a good cap, but it is not so bad as most of the caps I sell."
    He brought it forward, extended on his palm.
    "What do you think of that?" he asked. "Could you put up with that?"
    George fitted it on before the glass, and, choosing another remark from the book, said:
    "This hat fits me sufficiently well, but, tell me, do you consider that it becomes me?"
    The man stepped back and took a bird's-eye view.
    "Candidly," he replied, "I can't say that it does."
    He turned from George, and addressed himself to Harris and myself.
    "Your friend's beauty," said he, "I should describe as elusive. It is there, but you can easily miss it. Now, in that cap, to my mind, you do miss it."
    At that point it occurred to George that he had had sufficient fun with this particular man. He said:
    "That is all right. We don't want to lose the train. How much?"
    Answered the man: "The price of that cap, sir, which, in my opinion, is twice as much as it is worth, is four-and-six. Would you like it wrapped up in brown paper, sir, or in white?"
    George said he would take it as it was, paid the man four-and-six in silver, and went out. Harris and I followed.
    At Fenchurch Street we compromised with our cabman for five shillings. He made us another courtly bow, and begged us to remember him to the Emperor of Austria.
    Comparing views in the train, we agreed that we had lost the game by two points to one; and George, who was evidently disappointed, threw the book out of window.
    We found our luggage and the bicycles safe on the boat, and with the tide at twelve dropped down the river.