Chapter V: Preface: “Oh, that mine enemy would write a book—of short stories.” (5)

Had it not been for the beer and gin it is highly probable that Edwin would have given up the project, and have returned to fish and chips. But lying back in a comfortable seat in “The Two Tumblers” his thoughts mellowed. He felt broad-minded, comfortable, tolerant ... one had to make allowances. There must be all sorts of ways. Money wasn’t the only thing. Besides, he was spending too much. He couldn’t afford to go on throwing away seven-and-sixpences. One must be able to help people—by helping them. Doing things for them which didn’t cost money. He thought of Sir Walter Raleigh throwing down his cloak for Queen Elizabeth to walk over. Romantic but—extravagant and silly, really a shrewd political move, no doubt; not a good action at all. If he met an ill-clad tramp he could take off his coat and wrap round his shoulders and then—? Walk home to Quince Villa in his braces? What would Mrs. Pothecary have to say? Phew! One could save people from drowning, but he didn’t know how to swim. Fire! Perhaps there would be a fire. He could swarm up a ladder and save a woman from the top bedroom window. Heroic, but hardly inconspicuous; not exactly what he had meant. Besides, the firemen would never let him; they always kept these showy stunts for themselves. There _must_ be something....

He walked out of “The Two Tumblers.”

Crossing the road, he took a turning off the High Street. He saw a heavily-built woman carrying a basket of washing. He hurried after her, and raising his hat, said: “Excuse me, madam, may I carry your basket for you?”

She turned on him suspiciously and glared:

“No, thanks, Mr. Bottle-nose. I’ve ’ad some of that before. You ’op it! Mrs. Jaggs ’ad ’ers pinched last week that way.”

“Of course,” he thought to himself as he hurried away. “The trouble is I’m not dressed for the part. A bloomin’ swell can go about doin’ good actions all day and not arouse suspicions. If I try and ’elp a girl off a tram-car I get my face slapped.”

Mr. Pothecary was learning. He was becoming a complete philosopher, but it was not till late in the afternoon that he suddenly realized that patience and industry are always rewarded. He was appealed to by a maiden in distress.

It came about in this way. He found the atmosphere of Northern London entirely unsympathetic to good deeds. All his action appeared suspect. He began to feel at last like a criminal. He was convinced that he was being watched and followed. Once he patted a little girl’s head in a paternal manner. Immediately a woman appeared at a doorway and bawled out:

“’Ere, Lizzie, you come inside!”

At length in disgust he boarded a south-bound ’bus. He decided to experiment nearer home. He went to the terminus and took a train to the station just before his own. It was a small town called Uplingham. This should be the last dance of the moral philanderer. If there was no one in Uplingham upon whom he could perform a good action, he would just walk home—barely two miles—and go to bed and forget all about it. To-morrow he would return to Fish-and-chips, and the normal behavior of the normal citizen.

Uplingham was a dismal little town, consisting mostly of churches, chapels and pubs, and apparently quite deserted. As Edwin wandered through it there crept over him a sneaking feeling of relief. If he met no one—well, there it was, he had done his best; and he could go home with a clear conscience. After all it was the spirit that counted in these things....

“O-o-oh!”

He was passing a small stone church, standing back on a little frequented lane. The maiden was seated alone in the porch and she was crying. Edwin bustled through the gate and as he approached her he had time to observe that she was young, quietly dressed, and distinctly pretty.

“You are in trouble,” he said in his most feeling manner.

She looked up at him quickly, and dabbed her eyes.

“I’ve lost my baby! I’ve lost my baby!” she cried.

“Dear, dear, that’s very unfortunate! How did it happen?”

She pointed at an empty perambulator in the porch.

“I waited an hour here for my friends and husband and the clergyman. My baby was to be christened.” She gasped incoherently. “No one turned up. I went across to the Vicarage. The Vicar was away. I believe I ought to have gone to St. Bride’s. This is St. Paul’s. They didn’t know anything about it. They say people often make that mistake. When I got back the baby was gone. O-o-o-oh!”

“There, there, don’t cry,” said Mr. Pothecary. “Now I’ll go over to St. Bride’s and find out about it.”

“Oh, sir, do you mind waiting here with the perambulator while I go? I want my baby. I want my baby.”

“Why, yes, of course, of course.”

She dashed up the lane and left Mr. Pothecary in charge of an empty perambulator. In fifteen minutes’ time a thick-set young man came hurrying up to the porch. He looked at Edwin and pointing to the perambulator said:

“Is this Mrs. Frank’s or Mrs. Fred’s?”

“I don’t know,” said Edwin, rather testily.

“You don’t know! But you’re old Binns, ain’t you?”

“No, I’m not.”

The young man looked at him searchingly and then disappeared. Ten minutes elapsed and then a small boy rode up on a bicycle. He was also out of breath.

“Has Mrs. George been ’ere?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” replied Edwin.

“Mr. Henderson says he’s awfully sorry but he won’t be able to get away. You are to kiss the baby for ’im.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“This is St. Bride’s, isn’t it?”

“No, this is St. Paul’s.”

“Oh!” The boy leapt on to the bicycle and also vanished.

“This is absurd,” thought Edwin. “Of course, the whole thing is as plain as daylight. The poor girl has come to the wrong church. The whole party is at St. Bride’s, somebody must have taken the baby on there. I might as well take the perambulator along. They’ll be pleased. Now I wonder which is the way.”

He wheeled the perambulator into the lane. There was no one about to ask. He progressed nearly two hundred yards till he came to a field with a pond in it. This was apparently the wrong direction. He was staring about when he suddenly became aware of a hue and cry. A party of people came racing down the lane headed by the thick-set man, who was exclaiming:

“There he is! There he is!”

Edwin felt his heart beating. This was going to be a little embarrassing. They closed on him. The thickset man seized his wrists and at the same time remarked:

“See he hasn’t any firearms on him, Frank.”

The large man alluded to as Frank gripped him from behind.

“What have you done with my baby?” he demanded fiercely.

“I ’aven’t seen no baby,” yelped Mr. Pothecary.

“Oh! ’Aven’t yer! What are yer doin’ with my perambulator then?”

“I’m takin’ it to St. Bride’s Church.”

“Goin’ in the opposite direction.”

“I didn’t know the way.”

“Where’s the baby?”

“I ’aven’t seen it, I tell yer. The mother said she’d lost it.”

“What the hell! Do you know the mother’s in bed sick? You’re a liar, my man, and we’re goin’ to take you in charge. If you’ve done anything to my baby I’ll kill you with my hands.”

“That’s it, Frank. Let ’im ’ave it. Throw ’im in the pond!”

“I tell yer I don’t know anythin’ about it all, with yer Franks, Freds and Georges! Go to the devil, all of yer!”

In spite of his protestations, some one produced a rope and they handcuffed him and tied him to the gate of the field. A small crowd had collected and began to boo and jeer. A man from a cottage hard by produced a drag, and between them they dragged the pond, as the general belief was that Edwin had tied a stone to the baby and thrown it in and was then just about to make off.

The uproar continued for some time, mud and stones being thrown about rather carelessly.

The crowd became impatient that no baby was found in the pond. At length another man turned up on a bicycle and called out:

“What are you doing, Frank? You’ve missed the christening!”

“What!”

“Old Binns turned up with the nipper all right. He’d come round the wrong way.”

The crowd was obviously disappointed at the release of Edwin, and the father’s only solatium was:

“Well, it’s lucky for you, old bird!”

He and his friends trundled the perambulator away rapidly across the fields. Edwin had hardly time to give a sigh of relief before he found himself the center of a fresh disturbance. He was approaching the church when another crowd assailed him, headed by the forlorn maiden. She was still in a state of distress, but she was hugging a baby to her.

“Ah! You’ve found the baby!” exclaimed Edwin, trying to be amiable.

“Where is the perambulator?” she demanded.

“Your ’usband ’as taken it away, madam. He seemed to think I—”

A tall frigid young man stepped forward and said:

“Excuse me, I am the lady’s husband. Will you please explain yourself?”

Then Edwin lost his temper.

“Well, damn it, I don’t know who you all are!”

“The case is quite clear. You volunteered to take charge of the perambulator while my wife was absent. On her return you announce that it is spirited away. I shall hold you responsible for the entire cost—nearly ten pounds.”

“Make it a thousand,” roared Edwin. “I’m ’aving a nice cheap day.”

“I don’t wish for any more of your insolence, either. My wife has had a very trying experience. The baby has been christened Fred.”

“Well, what’s the matter with that?”

“Nothing,” screamed the mother. “_Only that it is a girl!_ It’s a girl and it has been duly christened Fred in a Christian church. Oh! there’s been an awful muddle.”

“It’s not this old fool’s fault,” interpolated the elderly woman quietly. “You see, Mrs. Frank and Mrs. Fred Smith were both going to have their babies christened to-day. Only Mrs. Frank was took sick, and sent me along with the child. I went to the wrong church and thinkin’ there was some mistake, went back home. Mrs. Frank’s baby’s never been christened at all. In the meantime, the ceremony was ready to start at St. Paul’s and Frank ’isself was there. No baby. They sends old Binns to scout around at other churches. People do make mistakes—finds this good lady’s child all primed up for christening in the church door, and no one near, carries it off. In the meantime, the father had gone on the ramp. It’s him that probably went off with the perambulator and trounced you up a bit, old sport. It’ll learn you not to interfere so much in future perhaps.”

“And the baby’s christened Fred!” wailed the mother. “My baby! My Gwendoline!” And she looked at Edwin with bitter recrimination in her eyes.

There was still a small crowd following and boys were jeering, and a fox-terrier, getting very excited, jumped up and bit Mr. Pothecary through the seat of his trousers. He struck at it with his stick, and hit a small boy, whose mother happened to be present. The good lady immediately entered the lists.

“Baby-killer.... Hun!” were the last words he heard as he was chased up the street and across the fields in the direction of his own village.

When he arrived it was nearly dark. Mr. Pothecary was tired, dirty, battered, torn, outraged, bruised and hatless. And his spirit hardened. The forces of reaction surged through him. He was done with good actions. He felt vindictive, spiteful, wicked. Slowly he took the last turning and his eye once more alighted on—the Peels’s fowl house.

And there came to him a vague desire to end his day by performing some action the contrary to good, something spiteful, petty, malign. His soul demanded some recompense for its abortive energies. And then he remembered that the Peels were away. They were returning late that evening. The two intensive fowl-houses were at the end of the kitchen garden, where all the young spring cabbages and peas had just been planted. They could be approached between a slit in the narrow black fence adjacent to a turnip field. Rather a long way round. A simple and rather futile plan sprang into his mind, but he was too tired to think of anything more criminal or diabolic.

He would creep round to the back, get through the fence, force his way into the fowl-house. Then he would kick out all those expensive Rhode Island pampered hens and lock them out. Inside he would upset everything and smash the place to pieces. The fowls would get all over the place. They would eat the young vegetables. Some of them would get lost, stolen by gypsies, killed by rats. What did he care? The Peels would probably not discover the outrage till the morrow, and they would never know who did it. Edwin chuckled inwardly, and rolled his eyes like the smooth villain of a fit-up melodrama. He glanced up and down to see that no one was looking, then he got across a gate and entered the turnip field.

Within five minutes he was forcing the door of the fowl-house with a spade. The fowls were already settling down for the night, and they clucked rather alarmingly, but Edwin’s blood was up. He chased them all out, forty-five of them, and made savage lunges at them with his feet. Then he upset all the corn he could find, and poured water on it and jumped on it. He smashed the complicated invention suspended from the ceiling, whereby the fowls had to reach up and get one grain of corn at a time. To his joy he found a pot of green paint, which he flung promiscuously over the walls and floor (and incidentally his clothes).

Then he crept out and bolted both of the doors.

The sleepy creatures were standing about outside, some feebly pecking about on the ground. He chased them through into the vegetable garden; then he rubbed some of the dirt and paint from his clothes and returned to the road.

When he arrived home he said to his wife:

“I fell off a tram on Waterloo Bridge. Lost my hat.”

He was cold and wet and his teeth were chattering. His wife bustled him off to bed and gave him a little hot grog.

Between the sheets he recovered contentment. He gurgled exultantly at this last and only satisfying exploit of the day. He dreamed lazily of the blind rage of the Peels....

It must have been half-past ten when his wife came up to bring him some hot gruel. He had been asleep. She put the cup by the bedside and rearranged his pillow.

“Feeling better?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m right,” he murmured.

She sat on a chair by the side of the bed and after a few minutes remarked:

“You’ve missed an excitement while you’ve been asleep.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. A fire!”

“A fire?”

“The Peels came home about an hour and a half ago and found the place on fire at the back.”

“Oh?”

“Their cook Lizzie has been over. She said some straw near the wash-house must have started it. It’s burnt out the wash-house and both the fowl-houses. She says Mr. Peel says he don’t care very much because he was heavily insured for the lot. But the funny thing is, the fowls wasn’t insured and they’ve found the whole lot down the field on the rabbit-hutches. Somebody must have got in and let the whole lot out. It was a fine thing to do, or else the poor things would have been burnt up. What’s the matter, Ned? Is the gruel too hot?”

THEM OTHERS

THEM OTHERS