Once a Week Part 35

"Don't let us be rash," I said thoughtfully. "Don't let us infuriate them."

"You aren't afraid of a striker?" asked Celia in amazement.

"Of an ordinary striker, no. In a strike of bank-clerks, or--or chess-players, or professional skeletons, I should be a lion among the blacklegs; but there is something about the very word coal porter which---- You know, I really think this is a case where the British Army might help us. We have been very good to it."

The British Army, I should explain, has been walking out with Jane lately. When we go away for week-ends we let the British Army drop in to supper. Luckily it neither smokes nor drinks nor takes any great interest in books. It is a great relief, on your week-ends in the country, to _know_ that the British Army is dropping in to supper, when otherwise you might only have suspected it. I may say that we are rather hoping to get a position in the Army Recruiting film on the strength of this hospitality.

"Let the British Army go," I said. "We've been very kind to him."

"I fancy Jane has left the service. I don't know why."

"Probably they quarrelled because she gave him caviare two nights running," I said. "Well, I suppose I shall have to go. But it will be no place for women. To-morrow afternoon I will sally forth alone to do it.

But," I added, "I shall probably return with two coal porters clinging round my neck. Order tea for three."

Next evening, after a warm and busy day at the office, I put on my top-hat and tail-coat and went out. If there was any accident I was determined to be described in the papers as "the body of a well-dressed man"; to go down to history as "the remains of a shabbily dressed individual" would be too depressing. Beautifully clothed, I jumped into a taxi and drove to Celia's greengrocer. Celia herself was keeping warm by paying still more calls.

"I want," I said nervously, "a hundredweight of coal and a cauliflower."

This was my own idea. I intended to place the cauliflower on the top of a sack, and so to deceive any too-inquisitive coal porter. "No, no," I should say, "not coal; nice cauliflowers for Sunday's dinner."

"Can't deliver the coal," said the greengrocer.

"I'm going to take it with me," I explained.

He went round to a yard at the back. I motioned my taxi along and followed him at the head of three small boys who had never seen a top-hat and a cauliflower so close together. We got the sack into position.

"Come, come," I said to the driver, "haven't you ever seen a dressing-case before? Give us a hand with it or I shall miss my train and be late for dinner."

He grinned and gave a hand. I paid the greengrocer, pressed the cauliflower into the hand of the smallest boy, and drove off....

It was absurdly easy.

There was no gore at all.

"There!" I said to Celia when she came back. "And when that's done I'll get you some more."

"Hooray! And yet," she went on, "I'm almost sorry. You see, I was working off my calls so nicely, and you'd been having some quite busy days at the office, hadn't you?"

THE ORDER OF THE BATH

"We must really do something about the bath," said Celia.

"We must," I agreed.

At present what we do is this. Punctually at six-thirty or nine, or whenever it is, Celia goes in to make herself clean and beautiful for the new day, while I amuse myself with a razor. After a quarter of an hour or so she gives a whistle to imply that the bathroom is now vacant, and I give another one to indicate that I have only cut myself once. I then go hopefully in and find that the bath is half full of water; whereupon I go back to my room and engage in Dr. Hugh de Selincourt's physical exercises for the middle-aged. After these are over I take another look at the bath, discover that it is now three-eighths full, and return to my room and busy myself with Dr. Archibald Marshall's mental drill for busy men. By the time I have committed three Odes of Horace to memory, it may be low tide or it may not; if not, I sit on the edge of the bath with the daily paper and read about the latest strike--my mind occupied equally with wondering when the water is going out and when the bricklayers are. And the thought that Celia is now in the dining-room eating more than her share of the toast does not console me in the least.

"Yes," I said, "it's absurd to go on like this. You had better see about it to-day, Celia."

"I don't think--I mean, I think--you know, it's really _your_ turn to do something for the bathroom."

"What do you mean, _my_ turn? Didn't I buy the gla.s.s shelves for it?

You'd never even heard of gla.s.s shelves."

"Well, who put them up after they'd been lying about for a month?" said Celia. "I did."

"And who b.u.mped his head against them the next day? I did."

"Yes, but that wasn't really a _useful_ thing to do. It's your turn to be useful."

"Celia, this is mutiny. All household matters are supposed to be looked after by you. I do the brain work; I earn the money; I cannot be bothered with these little domestic worries. I have said so before."

"I sort of thought you had."

You know, I am afraid that is true.

"After all," she went on, "the drinks are in your department."

"Hock, perhaps," I said; "soapy water, no. There is a difference."

"Not very much," said Celia.

By the end of another week I was getting seriously alarmed. I began to fear that unless I watched it very carefully I should be improving myself too much.

"While the water was running out this morning," I said to Celia, as I started my breakfast just about lunch-time, "I got _Paradise Lost_ off by heart, and made five hundred and ninety-six revolutions with the back paws. And then it was time to shave myself again. What a life for a busy man!"

"I don't know if you know that it's no----"

"Begin again," I said.

"--that it's no good waiting for the last inch or two to go out by itself. Because it won't. You have to--to _hoosh_ it out."

"I do. And I sit on the taps looking like a full moon and try to draw it out. But it's no good. We had a neap tide to-day and I had to hoosh four inches. Jolly."

Celia gave a sigh of resignation.

"All right," she said, "I'll go to the plumber to-day."

"Not the plumber," I begged. "On the contrary. The plumber is the man who _stops_ the leaks. What we really want is an unplumber."

We fell into silence again.

"But how silly we are!" cried Celia suddenly. "Of course!"