<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
<p class="gutsumm">How George, once upon a time, got up early in
the morning.—George, Harris, and Montmorency do not like
the look of the cold water.—Heroism and determination on
the part of J.—George and his shirt: story with a
moral.—Harris as cook.—Historical retrospect,
specially inserted for the use of schools.</p>
<p>I woke at six the next morning; and found George awake
too. We both turned round, and tried to go to sleep again,
but we could not. Had there been any particular reason why
we should not have gone to sleep again, but have got up and
dressed then and there, we should have dropped off while we were
looking at our watches, and have slept till ten. As there
was no earthly necessity for our getting up under another two
hours at the very least, and our getting up at that time was an
utter absurdity, it was only in keeping with the natural
cussedness of things in general that we should both feel that
lying down for five minutes more would be death to us.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. <i>He</i> had to go to business:
why should other people stop in bed merely because it was dark
and foggy!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><SPAN href="images/p167b.jpg">
<ANTIMG class='floatright' alt= "George and the policeman" title= "George and the policeman" src="images/p167s.jpg" /></SPAN>“What’s the time?” said the man, eyeing
George up and down with evident suspicion; “why, if you
listen you will hear it strike.”</p>
<p>George listened, and a neighbouring clock immediately
obliged.</p>
<p>“But it’s only gone three!” said George in
an injured tone, when it had finished.</p>
<p>“Well, and how many did you want it to go?”
replied the constable.</p>
<p>“Why, nine,” said George, showing his watch.</p>
<p>“Do you know where you live?” said the guardian of
public order, severely.</p>
<p>George thought, and gave the address.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>And George went home again, musing as he walked along, and let
himself in.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>He said he had never got up too early since that morning: it
had been such a warning to him.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Well, who’s going to be first in?” said
Harris at last.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><SPAN href="images/p171b.jpg">
<ANTIMG class='floatright' alt= "In the Thames" title= "In the Thames" src="images/p171s.jpg" /></SPAN>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.</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>“Is it all right?” sung out George.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>But I could not persuade them.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Ar’n’t you—you—going to get it
out?” said George, between his shrieks.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>“It isn’t my shirt—it’s
<i>yours</i>!”</p>
<p>I never saw a man’s face change from lively to severe so
suddenly in all my life before.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>I tried to make him see the fun of the thing, but he could
not. George is very dense at seeing a joke sometimes.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. Indeed, every
time George and I looked round at him he was sure to be
performing this feat. We thought at first that it was a
necessary part of the culinary arrangements.</p>
<p>We did not know what scrambled eggs were, and we fancied that
it must be some Red Indian or Sandwich Islands sort of dish that
required dances and incantations for its proper cooking.
Montmorency went and put his nose over it once, and the fat
spluttered up and scalded him, and then <i>he</i> began dancing
and cursing. Altogether it was one of the most interesting
and exciting operations I have ever witnessed. George and I
were both quite sorry when it was over.</p>
<p>The result was not altogether the success that Harris had
anticipated. There seemed so little to show for the
business. Six eggs had gone into the frying-pan, and all
that came out was a teaspoonful of burnt and unappetizing looking
mess.</p>
<p>Harris said it was the fault of the frying-pan, and thought it
would have gone better if we had had a fish-kettle and a
gas-stove; and we decided not to attempt the dish again until we
had those aids to housekeeping by us.</p>
<p>The sun had got more powerful by the time we had finished
breakfast, and the wind had dropped, and it was as lovely a
morning as one could desire. Little was in sight to remind
us of the nineteenth century; and, as we looked out upon the
river in the morning sunlight, we could almost fancy that the
centuries between us and that ever-to-be-famous June morning of
1215 had been drawn aside, and that we, English yeomen’s
sons in homespun cloth, with dirk at belt, were waiting there to
witness the writing of that stupendous page of history, the
meaning whereof was to be translated to the common people some
four hundred and odd years later by one Oliver Cromwell, who had
deeply studied it.</p>
<p>It is a fine summer morning—sunny, soft, and
still. But through the air there runs a thrill of coming
stir. King John has slept at Duncroft Hall, and all the day
before the little town of Staines has echoed to the clang of
armed men, and the clatter of great horses over its rough stones,
and the shouts of captains, and the grim oaths and surly jests of
bearded bowmen, billmen, pikemen, and strange-speaking foreign
spearmen.</p>
<p>Gay-cloaked companies of knights and squires have ridden in,
all travel-stained and dusty. And all the evening long the
timid townsmen’s doors have had to be quick opened to let
in rough groups of soldiers, for whom there must be found both
board and lodging, and the best of both, or woe betide the house
and all within; for the sword is judge and jury, plaintiff and
executioner, in these tempestuous times, and pays for what it
takes by sparing those from whom it takes it, if it pleases it to
do so.</p>
<p>Round the camp-fire in the market-place gather still more of
the Barons’ troops, and eat and drink deep, and bellow
forth roystering drinking songs, and gamble and quarrel as the
evening grows and deepens into night. The firelight sheds
quaint shadows on their piled-up arms and on their uncouth
forms. The children of the town steal round to watch them,
wondering; and brawny country wenches, laughing, draw near to
bandy ale-house jest and jibe with the swaggering troopers, so
unlike the village swains, who, now despised, stand apart behind,
with vacant grins upon their broad, peering faces. And out
from the fields around, glitter the faint lights of more distant
camps, as here some great lord’s followers lie mustered,
and there false John’s French mercenaries hover like
crouching wolves without the town.</p>
<p>And so, with sentinel in each dark street, and twinkling
watch-fires on each height around, the night has worn away, and
over this fair valley of old Thame has broken the morning of the
great day that is to close so big with the fate of ages yet
unborn.</p>
<p>Ever since grey dawn, in the lower of the two islands, just
above where we are standing, there has been great clamour, and
the sound of many workmen. The great pavilion brought there
yester eve is being raised, and carpenters are busy nailing tiers
of seats, while ’prentices from London town are there with
many-coloured stuffs and silks and cloth of gold and silver.</p>
<p>And now, lo! down upon the road that winds along the
river’s bank from Staines there come towards us, laughing
and talking together in deep guttural bass, a half-a-score of
stalwart halbert-men—Barons’ men, these—and
halt at a hundred yards or so above us, on the other bank, and
lean upon their arms, and wait.</p>
<p>And so, from hour to hour, march up along the road ever fresh
groups and bands of armed men, their casques and breastplates
flashing back the long low lines of morning sunlight, until, as
far as eye can reach, the way seems thick with glittering steel
and prancing steeds. And shouting horsemen are galloping
from group to group, and little banners are fluttering lazily in
the warm breeze, and every now and then there is a deeper stir as
the ranks make way on either side, and some great Baron on his
war-horse, with his guard of squires around him, passes along to
take his station at the head of his serfs and vassals.</p>
<p>And up the slope of Cooper’s Hill, just opposite, are
gathered the wondering rustics and curious townsfolk, who have
run from Staines, and none are quite sure what the bustle is
about, but each one has a different version of the great event
that they have come to see; and some say that much good to all
the people will come from this day’s work; but the old men
shake their heads, for they have heard such tales before.</p>
<p>And all the river down to Staines is dotted with small craft
and boats and tiny coracles—which last are growing out of
favour now, and are used only by the poorer folk. Over the
rapids, where in after years trim Bell Weir lock will stand, they
have been forced or dragged by their sturdy rowers, and now are
crowding up as near as they dare come to the great covered
barges, which lie in readiness to bear King John to where the
fateful Charter waits his signing.</p>
<p>It is noon, and we and all the people have been waiting
patient for many an hour, and the rumour has run round that
slippery John has again escaped from the Barons’ grasp, and
has stolen away from Duncroft Hall with his mercenaries at his
heels, and will soon be doing other work than signing charters
for his people’s liberty.</p>
<p>Not so! This time the grip upon him has been one of
iron, and he has slid and wriggled in vain. Far down the
road a little cloud of dust has risen, and draws nearer and grows
larger, and the pattering of many hoofs grows louder, and in and
out between the scattered groups of drawn-up men, there pushes on
its way a brilliant cavalcade of gay-dressed lords and
knights. And front and rear, and either flank, there ride
the yeomen of the Barons, and in the midst King John.</p>
<p>He rides to where the barges lie in readiness, and the great
Barons step forth from their ranks to meet him. He greets
them with a smile and laugh, and pleasant honeyed words, as
though it were some feast in his honour to which he had been
invited. But as he rises to dismount, he casts one hurried
glance from his own French mercenaries drawn up in the rear to
the grim ranks of the Barons’ men that hem him in.</p>
<p>Is it too late? One fierce blow at the unsuspecting
horseman at his side, one cry to his French troops, one desperate
charge upon the unready lines before him, and these rebellious
Barons might rue the day they dared to thwart his plans! A
bolder hand might have turned the game even at that point.
Had it been a Richard there! the cup of liberty might have been
dashed from England’s lips, and the taste of freedom held
back for a hundred years.</p>
<p>But the heart of King John sinks before the stern faces of the
English fighting men, and the arm of King John drops back on to
his rein, and he dismounts and takes his seat in the foremost
barge. And the Barons follow in, with each mailed hand upon
the sword-hilt, and the word is given to let go.</p>
<p>Slowly the heavy, bright-decked barges leave the shore of
Runningmede. Slowly against the swift current they work
their ponderous way, till, with a low grumble, they grate against
the bank of the little island that from this day will bear the
name of Magna Charta Island. And King John has stepped upon
the shore, and we wait in breathless silence till a great shout
cleaves the air, and the great cornerstone in England’s
temple of liberty has, now we know, been firmly laid.</p>
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