To escape from this train of reflection, I put a golf-ball in my pocket, and selecting a driver, strolled out into the paddock. A couple of sheep were browsing there, and they followed and took a keen interest in my practice. The one was a kindly, sympathetic old party. I do not think she understood the game; I think it was my doing this innocent thing so early in the morning that appealed to her. At every stroke I made she bleated:
“Go-o-o-d, go-o-o-d ind-e-e-d!”
She seemed as pleased as if she had done it herself. As for the other one, she was a cantankerous, disagreeable old thing, as discouraging to me as her friend was helpful.
“Ba-a-ad, da-a-a-m ba-a-a-d!” was her comment on almost every stroke. As a matter of fact, some were really excellent strokes; but she did it just to be contradictory, and for the sake of irritating. I could see that.
By a most regrettable accident, one of my swiftest balls struck the good sheep on the nose. And at that the bad sheep laughed – laughed distinctly and undoubtedly, a husky, vulgar laugh; and, while her friend stood glued to the ground, too astonished to move, she changed her note for the first time and bleated:
“Go-o-o-d, ve-e-ry go-o-o-d! Be-e-e-est sho-o-o-ot he-e-e’s ma-a-a-de!”
I would have given half-a-crown if it had been she I had hit instead of the other one. It is ever the good and amiable who suffer in this world.
I had wasted more time than I had intended in the paddock, and when Ethelbertha came to tell me it was half-past seven, and the breakfast was on the table, I remembered that I had not shaved. It vexes Ethelbertha my shaving quickly. She fears that to outsiders it may suggest a poor-spirited attempt at suicide, and that in consequence it may get about the neighbourhood that we are not happy together. As a further argument, she has also hinted that my appearance is not of the kind that can be trifled with.
On the whole, I was just as glad not to be able to take a long farewell of Ethelbertha; I did not want to risk her breaking down. But I should have liked more opportunity to say a few farewell words of advice to the children, especially as regards my fishing rod, which they will persist in using for cricket stumps; and I hate having to run for a train. Quarter of a mile from the station I overtook George and Harris; they were also running. In their case – so Harris informed me, jerkily, while we trotted side by side – it was the new kitchen stove that was to blame. This was the first morning they had tried it, and from some cause or other it had blown up the kidneys and scalded the cook. He said he hoped that by the time we returned they would have got more used to it.
We caught the train by the skin of our teeth[57], 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[58] 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