Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (407 page)

After that, whenever some more than usually stirring crash or blood-curdling bump would cause us to leap from our seats and cry: “What on earth has happened?” Amenda would reply: “Oh, it’s only James, mum, making himself generally useful.”

Whatever he lifted he let fall; whatever he touched he upset; whatever he came near — that was not a fixture — he knocked over; if it was a fixture, it knocked
him
over. This was not carelessness: it seemed to be a natural gift. Never in his life, I am convinced, had he carried a bucketful of anything anywhere without tumbling over it before he got there. One of his duties was to water the flowers on the roof. Fortunately — for the flowers — Nature, that summer, stood drinks with a lavishness sufficient to satisfy the most confirmed vegetable toper: otherwise every plant on our boat would have died from drought. Never one drop of water did they receive from him. He was for ever taking them water, but he never arrived there with it. As a rule he upset the pail before he got it on to the boat at all, and this was the best thing that could happen, because then the water simply went back into the river, and did no harm to any one. Sometimes, however, he would succeed in landing it, and then the chances were he would spill it over the deck or into the passage. Now and again, he would get half-way up the ladder before the accident occurred. Twice he nearly reached the top; and once he actually did gain the roof. What happened there on that memorable occasion will never be known. The boy himself, when picked up, could explain nothing. It is supposed that he lost his head with the pride of the achievement, and essayed feats that neither his previous training nor his natural abilities justified him in attempting. However that may be, the fact remains that the main body of the water came down the kitchen chimney; and that the boy and the empty pail arrived together on deck before they knew they had started.

When he could find nothing else to damage, he would go out of his way to upset himself. He could not be sure of stepping from his own punt on to the boat with safety. As often as not, he would catch his foot in the chain or the punt-pole, and arrive on his chest.

Amenda used to condole with him. “Your mother ought to be ashamed of herself,” I heard her telling him one morning; “she could never have taught you to walk. What you want is a go-cart.”

He was a willing lad, but his stupidity was super-natural. A comet appeared in the sky that year, and everybody was talking about it. One day he said to me: —

“There’s a comet coming, ain’t there, sir?” He talked about it as though it were a circus.

“Coming!” I answered, “it’s come. Haven’t you seen it?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh, well, you have a look for it to-night. It’s worth seeing.”

“Yees, sir, I should like to see it. It’s got a tail, ain’t it, sir?”

“Yes, a very fine tail.”

“Yees, sir, they said it ‘ad a tail. Where do you go to see it, sir?”

“Go! You don’t want to go anywhere. You’ll see it in your own garden at ten o’clock.”

He thanked me, and, tumbling over a sack of potatoes, plunged head foremost into his punt and departed.

Next morning, I asked him if he had seen the comet.

“No, sir, I couldn’t see it anywhere.”

“Did you look?”

“Yees, sir. I looked a long time.”

“How on earth did you manage to miss it then?” I exclaimed. “It was a clear enough night. Where did you look?”

“In our garden, sir. Where you told me.”

“Whereabouts in the garden?” chimed in Amenda, who happened to be standing by; “under the gooseberry bushes?”

“Yees — everywhere.”

That is what he had done: he had taken the stable lantern and searched the garden for it.

But the day when he broke even his own record for foolishness happened about three weeks later. MacShaughnassy was staying with us at the time, and on the Friday evening he mixed us a salad, according to a recipe given him by his aunt. On the Saturday morning, everybody was, of course, very ill. Everybody always is very ill after partaking of any dish prepared by MacShaughnassy. Some people attempt to explain this fact by talking glibly of “cause and effect.” MacShaughnassy maintains that it is simply coincidence.

“How do you know,” he says, “that you wouldn’t have been ill if you hadn’t eaten any? You’re queer enough now, any one can see, and I’m very sorry for you; but, for all that you can tell, if you hadn’t eaten any of that stuff you might have been very much worse — perhaps dead. In all probability, it has saved your life.” And for the rest of the day, he assumes towards you the attitude of a man who has dragged you from the grave.

The moment Jimmy arrived I seized hold of him.

“Jimmy,” I said, “you must rush off to the chemist’s immediately. Don’t stop for anything. Tell him to give you something for colic — the result of vegetable poisoning. It must be something very strong, and enough for four. Don’t forget, something to counteract the effects of vegetable poisoning. Hurry up, or it may be too late.”

My excitement communicated itself to the boy. He tumbled back into his punt, and pushed off vigorously. I watched him land, and disappear in the direction of the village.

Half an hour passed, but Jimmy did not return. No one felt sufficiently energetic to go after him. We had only just strength enough to sit still and feebly abuse him. At the end of an hour we were all feeling very much better. At the end of an hour and a half we were glad he had not returned when he ought to have, and were only curious as to what had become of him.

In the evening, strolling through the village, we saw him sitting by the open door of his mother’s cottage, with a shawl wrapped round him. He was looking worn and ill.

“Why, Jimmy,” I said, “what’s the matter? Why didn’t you come back this morning?”

“I couldn’t, sir,” Jimmy answered, “I was so queer. Mother made me go to bed.”

“You seemed all right in the morning,” I said; “what’s made you queer?”

“What Mr. Jones give me, sir: it upset me awful.”

A light broke in upon me.

“What did you say, Jimmy, when you got to Mr. Jones’s shop?” I asked.

“I told ‘im what you said, sir, that ‘e was to give me something to counteract the effects of vegetable poisoning. And that it was to be very strong, and enough for four.”

“And what did he say?”

“‘E said that was only your nonsense, sir, and that I’d better have enough for one to begin with; and then ‘e asked me if I’d been eating green apples again.”

“And you told him?”

“Yees, sir, I told ‘im I’d ‘ad a few, and ‘e said it served me right, and that ‘e ‘oped it would be a warning to me. And then ‘e put something fizzy in a glass and told me to drink it.”

“And you drank it?”

“Yees, sir.”

“It never occurred to you, Jimmy, that there was nothing the matter with you — that you were never feeling better in your life, and that you did not require any medicine?”

“No, sir.”

“Did one single scintilla of thought of any kind occur to you in connection with the matter, Jimmy, from beginning to end?”

“No, sir.”

People who never met Jimmy disbelieve this story. They argue that its premises are in disaccord with the known laws governing human nature, that its details do not square with the average of probability. People who have seen and conversed with Jimmy accept it with simple faith.

The advent of Jephson — which I trust the reader has not entirely forgotten — cheered us up considerably. Jephson was always at his best when all other things were at their worst. It was not that he struggled in Mark Tapley fashion to appear most cheerful when most depressed; it was that petty misfortunes and mishaps genuinely amused and inspirited him. Most of us can recall our unpleasant experiences with amused affection; Jephson possessed the robuster philosophy that enabled him to enjoy his during their actual progress. He arrived drenched to the skin, chuckling hugely at the idea of having come down on a visit to a houseboat in such weather.

Under his warming influence, the hard lines on our faces thawed, and by supper time we were, as all Englishmen and women who wish to enjoy life should be, independent of the weather.

Later on, as if disheartened by our indifference, the rain ceased, and we took our chairs out on the deck, and sat watching the lightning, which still played incessantly. Then, not unnaturally, the talk drifted into a sombre channel, and we began recounting stories, dealing with the gloomy and mysterious side of life.

Some of these were worth remembering, and some were not. The one that left the strongest impression on my mind was a tale that Jephson told us.

I had been relating a somewhat curious experience of my own. I met a man in the Strand one day that I knew very well, as I thought, though I had not seen him for years. We walked together to Charing Cross, and there we shook hands and parted. Next morning, I spoke of this meeting to a mutual friend, and then I learnt, for the first time, that the man had died six months before.

The natural inference was that I had mistaken one man for another, an error that, not having a good memory for faces, I frequently fall into. What was remarkable about the matter, however, was that throughout our walk I had conversed with the man under the impression that he was that other dead man, and, whether by coincidence or not, his replies had never once suggested to me my mistake.

As soon as I finished, Jephson, who had been listening very thoughtfully, asked me if I believed in spiritualism “to its fullest extent.”

“That is rather a large question,” I answered. “What do you mean by ‘spiritualism to its fullest extent’?”

“Well, do you believe that the spirits of the dead have not only the power of revisiting this earth at their will, but that, when here, they have the power of action, or rather, of exciting to action? Let me put a definite case. A spiritualist friend of mine, a sensible and by no means imaginative man, once told me that a table, through the medium of which the spirit of a friend had been in the habit of communicating with him, came slowly across the room towards him, of its own accord, one night as he sat alone, and pinioned him against the wall. Now can any of you believe that, or can’t you?”

“I could,” Brown took it upon himself to reply; “but, before doing so, I should wish for an introduction to the friend who told you the story. Speaking generally,” he continued, “it seems to me that the difference between what we call the natural and the supernatural is merely the difference between frequency and rarity of occurrence. Having regard to the phenomena we are compelled to admit, I think it illogical to disbelieve anything we are unable to disprove.”

“For my part,” remarked MacShaughnassy, “I can believe in the ability of our spirit friends to give the quaint entertainments credited to them much easier than I can in their desire to do so.”

“You mean,” added Jephson, “that you cannot understand why a spirit, not compelled as we are by the exigencies of society, should care to spend its evenings carrying on a laboured and childish conversation with a room full of abnormally uninteresting people.”

“That is precisely what I cannot understand,” MacShaughnassy agreed.

“Nor I, either,” said Jephson. “But I was thinking of something very different altogether. Suppose a man died with the dearest wish of his heart unfulfilled, do you believe that his spirit might have power to return to earth and complete the interrupted work?”

“Well,” answered MacShaughnassy, “if one admits the possibility of spirits retaining any interest in the affairs of this world at all, it is certainly more reasonable to imagine them engaged upon a task such as you suggest, than to believe that they occupy themselves with the performance of mere drawing-room tricks. But what are you leading up to?”

“Why, to this,” replied Jephson, seating himself straddle-legged across his chair, and leaning his arms upon the back. “I was told a story this morning at the hospital by an old French doctor. The actual facts are few and simple; all that is known can be read in the Paris police records of sixty-two years ago.

“The most important part of the case, however, is the part that is not known, and that never will be known.

“The story begins with a great wrong done by one man unto another man. What the wrong was I do not know. I am inclined to think, however, it was connected with a woman. I think that, because he who had been wronged hated him who had wronged him with a hate such as does not often burn in a man’s brain, unless it be fanned by the memory of a woman’s breath.

“Still that is only conjecture, and the point is immaterial. The man who had done the wrong fled, and the other man followed him. It became a point-to-point race, the first man having the advantage of a day’s start. The course was the whole world, and the stakes were the first man’s life.

“Travellers were few and far between in those days, and this made the trail easy to follow. The first man, never knowing how far or how near the other was behind him, and hoping now and again that he might have baffled him, would rest for a while. The second man, knowing always just how far the first one was before him, never paused, and thus each day the man who was spurred by Hate drew nearer to the man who was spurred by Fear.

“At this town the answer to the never-varied question would be: —

“‘At seven o’clock last evening, M’sieur.’

“‘Seven — ah; eighteen hours. Give me something to eat, quick, while the horses are being put to.’

“At the next the calculation would be sixteen hours.

“Passing a lonely châlet, Monsieur puts his head out of the window: —

“‘How long since a carriage passed this way, with a tall, fair man inside?’

“‘Such a one passed early this morning, M’sieur.’

“‘Thanks, drive on, a hundred francs apiece if you are through the pass before daybreak.’

“‘And what for dead horses, M’sieur?’

“‘Twice their value when living.’

“One day the man who was ridden by Fear looked up, and saw before him the open door of a cathedral, and, passing in, knelt down and prayed. He prayed long and fervently, for men, when they are in sore straits, clutch eagerly at the straws of faith. He prayed that he might be forgiven his sin, and, more important still, that he might be pardoned the consequences of his sin, and be delivered from his adversary; and a few chairs from him, facing him, knelt his enemy, praying also.