Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (136 page)

Robina talked, I should say, for a quarter of an hour. By the time she had done, it appeared to me rather a beautiful idea. Dick’s vacation had just commenced. For the next three months there would be nothing else for him to do but — to employ his own expressive phrase—”rot round.” In any event, it would be keeping him out of mischief. Veronica’s governess was leaving. Veronica’s governess generally does leave at the end of about a year. I think sometimes of advertising for a lady without a conscience. At the end of a year, they explain to me that their conscience will not allow them to remain longer; they do not feel they are earning their salary. It is not that the child is not a dear child, it is not that she is stupid. Simply it is — as a German lady to whom Dick had been giving what he called finishing lessons in English, once put it — that she does not seem to be “taking any.” Her mother’s idea is that it is “sinking in.” Perhaps if we allowed Veronica to lie fallow for awhile, something might show itself. Robina, speaking for herself, held that a period of quiet usefulness, away from the society of other silly girls and sillier boys, would result in her becoming a sensible woman. It is not often that Robina’s yearnings take this direction: to thwart them, when they did, seemed wrong.

We had some difficulty with the Little Mother. That these three babies of hers will ever be men and women capable of running a six-roomed cottage appears to the Little Mother in the light of a fantastic dream. I explained to her that I should be there, at all events for two or three days in every week, to give an eye to things. Even that did not content her. She gave way eventually on Robina’s solemn undertaking that she should be telegraphed for the first time Veronica coughed.

On Monday we packed a one-horse van with what we deemed essential. Dick and Robina rode their bicycles. Veronica, supported by assorted bedding, made herself comfortable upon the tailboard. I followed down by train on the Wednesday afternoon.

CHAPTER III

It was the cow that woke me the first morning. I did not know it was our cow — not at the time. I didn’t know we had a cow. I looked at my watch; it was half-past two. I thought maybe she would go to sleep again, but her idea was that the day had begun. I went to the window, the moon was at the full. She was standing by the gate, her head inside the garden; I took it her anxiety was lest we might miss any of it. Her neck was stretched out straight, her eyes towards the sky; which gave to her the appearance of a long-eared alligator. I have never had much to do with cows. I don’t know how you talk to them. I told her to “be quiet,” and to “lie down”; and made pretence to throw a boot at her. It seemed to cheer her, having an audience; she added half a dozen extra notes. I never knew before a cow had so much in her. There is a thing one sometimes meets with in the suburbs — or one used to; I do not know whether it is still extant, but when I was a boy it was quite common. It has a hurdy-gurdy fixed to its waist and a drum strapped on behind, a row of pipes hanging from its face, and bells and clappers from most of its other joints. It plays them all at once, and smiles. This cow reminded me of it — with organ effects added. She didn’t smile; there was that to be said in her favour.

I hoped that if I made believe to be asleep she would get discouraged. So I closed the window ostentatiously, and went back to bed. But it only had the effect of putting her on her mettle. “He did not care for that last,” I imagined her saying to herself, “I wasn’t at my best. There wasn’t feeling enough in it.” She kept it up for about half an hour, and then the gate against which, I suppose, she had been leaning, gave way with a crash. That frightened her, and I heard her gallop off across the field. I was on the point of dozing off again when a pair of pigeons settled on the window-sill and began to coo. It is a pretty sound when you are in the mood for it. I wrote a poem once — a simple thing, but instinct with longing — while sitting under a tree and listening to the cooing of a pigeon. But that was in the afternoon. My only longing now was for a gun. Three times I got out of bed and “shoo’d” them away. The third time I remained by the window till I had got it firmly into their heads that I really did not want them. My behaviour on the former two occasions they had evidently judged to be mere playfulness. I had just got back to bed again when an owl began to screech. That is another sound I used to think attractive — so weird, so mysterious. It is Swinburne, I think, who says that you never get the desired one and the time and the place all right together. If the beloved one is with you, it is the wrong place or at the wrong time; and if the time and the place happen to be right, then it is the party that is wrong. The owl was all right: I like owls. The place was all right. He had struck the wrong time, that was all. Eleven o’clock at night, when you can’t see him, and naturally feel that you want to, is the proper time for an owl. Perched on the roof of a cow-shed in the early dawn he looks silly. He clung there, flapping his wings and screeching at the top of his voice. What it was he wanted I am sure I don’t know; and anyhow it didn’t seem the way to get it. He came to this conclusion himself at the end of twenty minutes, and shut himself up and went home. I thought I was going to have at last some peace, when a corncrake — a creature upon whom Nature has bestowed a song like to the tearing of calico-sheets mingled with the sharpening of saws — settled somewhere in the garden and set to work to praise its Maker according to its lights. I have a friend, a poet, who lives just off the Strand, and spends his evenings at the Garrick Club. He writes occasional verse for the evening papers, and talks about the “silent country, drowsy with the weight of languors.” One of these times I’ll lure him down for a Saturday to Monday and let him find out what the country really is — let him hear it. He is becoming too much of a dreamer: it will do him good, wake him up a bit. The corncrake after awhile stopped quite suddenly with a jerk, and for quite five minutes there was silence.

“If this continues for another five,” I said to myself, “I’ll be asleep.” I felt it coming over me. I had hardly murmured the words when the cow turned up again. I should say she had been somewhere and had had a drink. She was in better voice than ever.

It occurred to me that this would be an opportunity to make a few notes on the sunrise. The literary man is looked to for occasional description of the sunrise. The earnest reader who has heard about this sunrise thirsts for full particulars. Myself, for purposes of observation, I have generally chosen December or the early part of January. But one never knows. Maybe one of these days I’ll want a summer sunrise, with birds and dew-besprinkled flowers: it goes well with the rustic heroine, the miller’s daughter, or the girl who brings up chickens and has dreams. I met a brother author once at seven o’clock in the morning in Kensington Gardens. He looked half asleep and so disagreeable that I hesitated for awhile to speak to him: he is a man that as a rule breakfasts at eleven. But I summoned my courage and accosted him.

“This is early for you,” I said.

“It’s early for anyone but a born fool,” he answered.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Can’t you sleep?”

“Can’t I sleep?” he retorted indignantly. “Why, I daren’t sit down upon a seat, I daren’t lean up against a tree. If I did I’d be asleep in half a second.”

“What’s the idea?” I persisted. “Been reading Smiles’s ‘Self Help and the Secret of Success’? Don’t be absurd,” I advised him. “You’ll be going to Sunday school next and keeping a diary. You have left it too late: we don’t reform at forty. Go home and go to bed.” I could see he was doing himself no good.

“I’m going to bed,” he answered, “I’m going to bed for a month when I’ve finished this confounded novel that I’m on. Take my advice,” he said — he laid his hand upon my shoulder—”Never choose a colonial girl for your heroine. At our age it is simple madness.”

“She’s a fine girl,” he continued, “and good. Has a heart of gold. She’s wearing me to a shadow. I wanted something fresh and unconventional. I didn’t grasp what it was going to do. She’s the girl that gets up early in the morning and rides bare-back — the horse, I mean, of course; don’t be so silly. Over in New South Wales it didn’t matter. I threw in the usual local colour — the eucalyptus-tree and the kangaroo — and let her ride. It is now that she is over here in London that I wish I had never thought of her. She gets up at five and wanders about the silent city. That means, of course, that I have to get up at five in order to record her impressions. I have walked six miles this morning. First to St. Paul’s Cathedral; she likes it when there’s nobody about. You’d think it wasn’t big enough for her to see if anybody else was in the street. She thinks of it as of a mother watching over her sleeping children; she’s full of all that sort of thing. And from there to Westminster Bridge. She sits on the parapet and reads Wordsworth, till the policeman turns her off. This is another of her favourite spots.” He indicated with a look of concentrated disgust the avenue where we were standing. “This is where she likes to finish up. She comes here to listen to a blackbird.”

“Well, you are through with it now,” I said to console him. “You’ve done it; and it’s over.”

“Through with it!” he laughed bitterly. “I’m just beginning it. There’s the entire East End to be done yet: she’s got to meet a fellow there as big a crank as herself. And walking isn’t the worst. She’s going to have a horse; you can guess what that means. — Hyde Park will be no good to her. She’ll find out Richmond and Ham Common. I’ve got to describe the scenery and the mad joy of the thing.”

“Can’t you imagine it?” I suggested.

“I’m going to imagine all the enjoyable part of it,” he answered. “I must have a groundwork to go upon. She’s got to have feelings come to her upon this horse. You can’t enter into a rider’s feelings when you’ve almost forgotten which side of the horse you get up.”

I walked with him to the Serpentine. I had been wondering how it was he had grown stout so suddenly. He had a bath towel round him underneath his coat.

“It’ll give me my death of cold, I know it will,” he chattered while unlacing his boots.

“Can’t you leave it till the summer-time,” I suggested, “and take her to Ostend?”

“It wouldn’t be unconventional,” he growled. “She wouldn’t take an interest in it.”

“But do they allow ladies to bathe in the Serpentine?” I persisted.

“It won’t be the Serpentine,” he explained. “It’s going to be the Thames at Greenwich. But it must be the same sort of feeling. She’s got to tell them all about it during a lunch in Queen’s Gate, and shock them all. That’s all she does it for, in my opinion.”

He emerged a mottled blue. I helped him into his clothes, and he was fortunate enough to find an early cab. The book appeared at Christmas. The critics agreed that the heroine was a delightful creation. Some of them said they would like to have known her.

Remembering my poor friend, it occurred to me that by going out now and making a few notes about the morning, I might be saving myself trouble later on. I slipped on a few things — nothing elaborate — put a notebook in my pocket, opened the door and went down.

Perhaps it would be more correct to say “opened the door and was down.” It was my own fault, I admit. We had talked this thing over before going to bed, and I myself had impressed upon Veronica the need for caution. The architect of the country cottage does not waste space. He dispenses with landings; the bedroom door opens on to the top stair. It does not do to walk out of your bedroom, for the reason there is nothing outside to walk on. I had said to Veronica, pointing out this fact to her:

“Now don’t, in the morning, come bursting out of the room in your usual volcanic style, because if you do there will be trouble. As you perceive, there is no landing. The stairs commence at once; they are steep, and they lead down to a brick floor. Open the door quietly, look where you are going, and step carefully.”

Dick had added his advice to mine. “I did that myself the first morning,” Dick had said. “I stepped straight out of the bedroom into the kitchen; and I can tell you, it hurts. You be careful, young ‘un. This cottage doesn’t lend itself to dash.”

Robina had fallen down with a tray in her hand. She said that never should she forget the horror of that moment, when, sitting on the kitchen floor, she had cried to Dick — her own voice sounding to her as if it came from somewhere quite far off: “Is it broken? Tell me the truth. Is it broken anywhere?” and Dick had replied: “Broken! why, it’s smashed to atoms. What did you expect?” Robina had asked the question with reference to her head, while Dick had thought she was alluding to the teapot. In that moment, had said Robina, her whole life had passed before her. She let Veronica feel the bump.

Veronica was disappointed with the bump, having expected something bigger, but had promised to be careful. We had all agreed that if in spite of our warnings she forgot, and came blundering down in the morning, it would serve her right. It was thinking of all this that, as I lay upon the floor, made me feel angry with everybody. I hate people who can sleep through noises that wake me up. Why was I the only person in the house to be disturbed? Dick’s room was round the corner; there was some excuse for him. But Robina and Veronica’s window looked straight down upon the cow. If Robina and Veronica were not a couple of logs, the cow would have aroused them. We should have discussed the matter with the door ajar. Robina would have said, “Whatever you do, be careful of the stairs, Pa,” and I should have remembered. The modern child appears to me to have no feeling for its parent.

I picked myself up and started for the door. The cow continued bellowing steadily. My whole anxiety was to get to her quickly and to hit her. But the door took more finding than I could have believed possible. The shutters were closed and the whole place was in pitch darkness. The idea had been to furnish this cottage only with things that were absolutely necessary, but the room appeared to me to be overcrowded. There was a milking-stool, which is a thing made purposely heavy so that it may not be easily upset. If I tumbled over it once I tumbled over it a dozen times. I got hold of it at last and carried it about with me. I thought I would use it to hit the cow — that is, when I had found the front-door. I knew it led out of the parlour, but could not recollect its exact position. I argued that if I kept along the wall I should be bound to come to it. I found the wall, and set off full of hope. I suppose the explanation was that, without knowing it, I must have started with the door, not the front-door, the other door, leading into the kitchen. I crept along, carefully feeling my way, and struck quite new things altogether — things I had no recollection of and that hit me in fresh places. I climbed over what I presumed to be a beer-barrel and landed among bottles; there were dozens upon dozens of them. To get away from these bottles I had to leave the wall; but I found it again, as I thought, and I felt along it for another half a dozen yards or so and then came again upon bottles: the room appeared to be paved with bottles. A little farther on I rolled over another beer-barrel: as a matter of fact it was the same beer-barrel, but I did not know this. At the time it seemed to me that Robina had made up her mind to run a public-house. I found the milking-stool again and started afresh, and before I had gone a dozen steps was in among bottles again. Later on, in the broad daylight, it was easy enough to understand what had happened. I had been carefully feeling my way round and round a screen. I got so sick of these bottles and so tired of rolling over these everlasting beer-barrels, that I abandoned the wall and plunged boldly into space.