Captains All and Others

He pondered the question for a week, and meanwhile the tins—to the secret disappointment of Mr. Evans—remained untouched in his yard. For the whole of the time he went about looking, as Mrs. Grummit expressed it, as though his dinner had disagreed with him.

“I’ve been talking to old Bill Smith,” he said, suddenly, as he came in one night.

Mrs. Grummit looked up, and noticed with wifely pleasure that he was looking almost cheerful.

“He’s given me a tip,” said Mr. Grummit, with a faint smile; “a copper mustn’t come into a free-born Englishman’s ‘ouse unless he’s invited.”

“Wot of it?” inquired his wife. “You wasn’t think of asking him in, was you?”

Mr. Grummit regarded her almost play-fully. “If a copper comes in without being told to,” he continued, “he gets into trouble for it. Now d’ye see?”

“But he won’t come,” said the puzzled Mrs. Grummit.

Mr. Grummit winked. “Yes ‘e will if you scream loud enough,” he retorted. “Where’s the copper-stick?”

“Have you gone mad?” demanded his wife, “or do you think I ‘ave?”

“You go up into the bedroom,” said Mr. Grummit, emphasizing his remarks with his forefinger. “I come up and beat the bed black and blue with the copper-stick; you scream for mercy and call out ‘Help!’ ‘Murder!’ and things like that. Don’t call out ‘Police!’ cos Bill ain’t sure about that part. Evans comes bursting in to save your life—I’ll leave the door on the latch—and there you are. He’s sure to get into trouble for it. Bill said so. He’s made a study o’ that sort o’ thing.”

Mrs. Grummit pondered this simple plan so long that her husband began to lose patience. At last, against her better sense, she rose and fetched the weapon in question.

“And you be careful what you’re hitting,” she said, as they went upstairs to bed. “We’d better have ‘igh words first, I s’pose?”

“You pitch into me with your tongue,” said Mr. Grummit, amiably.

Mrs. Grummit, first listening to make sure that the constable and his wife were in the bedroom the other side of the flimsy wall, complied, and in a voice that rose gradually to a piercing falsetto told Mr. Grummit things that had been rankling in her mind for some months. She raked up misdemeanours that he had long since forgotten, and, not content with that, had a fling at the entire Grummit family, beginning with her mother-in-law and ending with Mr. Grummit’s youngest sister. The hand that held the copper-stick itched.

“Any more to say?” demanded Mr. Grummit advancing upon her.

Mrs. Grummit emitted a genuine shriek, and Mr. Grummit, suddenly remembering himself, stopped short and attacked the bed with extraordinary fury. The room resounded with the blows, and the efforts of Mrs. Grummit were a revelation even to her husband.

“I can hear ‘im moving,” whispered Mr. Grummit, pausing to take breath.

“Mur—der!” wailed his wife. “Help! Help!”

Mr. Grummit, changing the stick into his left hand, renewed the attack; Mrs. Grummit, whose voice was becoming exhausted, sought a temporary relief in moans.

“Is—he–deaf?” panted the wife-beater, “or wot?”

He knocked over a chair, and Mrs. Grummit contrived another frenzied scream. A loud knocking sounded on the wall.

“Hel—lp!” moaned Mrs. Grummit.

“Halloa, there!” came the voice of the constable. “Why don’t you keep that baby quiet? We can’t get a wink of sleep.”

Mr. Grummit dropped the stick on the bed and turned a dazed face to his wife.

“He—he’s afraid—to come in,” he gasped. “Keep it up, old gal.”

He took up the stick again and Mrs. Grummit did her best, but the heart had gone out of the thing, and he was about to give up the task as hopeless when the door below was heard to open with a bang.

“Here he is,” cried the jubilant Grummit. “Now!”

His wife responded, and at the same moment the bedroom door was flung open, and her brother, who had been hastily fetched by the neighbours on the other side, burst into the room and with one hearty blow sent Mr. Grummit sprawling.

“Hit my sister, will you?” he roared, as the astounded Mr. Grummit rose. “Take that!”

Mr. Grummit took it, and several other favours, while his wife, tugging at her brother, endeavoured to explain. It was not, however, until Mr. Grummit claimed the usual sanctuary of the defeated by refusing to rise that she could make herself heard.

“Joke?” repeated her brother, incredulously. “Joke?”

Mrs. Grummit in a husky voice explained.

Her brother passed from incredulity to amazement and from amazement to mirth. He sat down gurgling, and the indignant face of the injured Grummit only added to his distress.

“Best joke I ever heard in my life,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Don’t look at me like that, Bob; I can’t bear it.”

“Get off ‘ome,” responded Mr. Grummit, glowering at him.

“There’s a crowd outside, and half the doors in the place open,” said the other. “Well, it’s a good job there’s no harm done. So long.”

He passed, beaming, down the stairs, and Mr. Grummit, drawing near the window, heard him explaining in a broken voice to the neighbours outside. Strong men patted him on the back and urged him gruffly to say what he had to say and laugh afterwards. Mr. Grummit turned from the window, and in a slow and stately fashion prepared to retire for the night. Even the sudden and startling disappearance of Mrs. Grummit as she got into bed failed to move him.

“The bed’s broke, Bob,” she said faintly.

“Beds won’t last for ever,” he said, shortly; “sleep on the floor.”

Mrs. Grummit clambered out, and after some trouble secured the bedclothes and made up a bed in a corner of the room. In a short time she was fast asleep; but her husband, broad awake, spent the night in devising further impracticable schemes for the discomfiture of the foe next door.

He saw Mr. Evans next morning as he passed on his way to work. The constable was at the door smoking in his shirt-sleeves, and Mr. Grummit felt instinctively that he was waiting there to see him pass.

“I heard you last night,” said the constable, playfully. “My word! Good gracious!”

“Wot’s the matter with you?” demanded Mr. Grummit, stopping short.

The constable stared at him. “She has been knocking you about,” he gasped. “Why, it must ha’ been you screaming, then! I thought it sounded loud. Why don’t you go and get a summons and have her locked up? I should be pleased to take her.”

Mr. Grummit faced him, quivering with passion. “Wot would it cost if I set about you?” he demanded, huskily.

“Two months,” said Mr. Evans, smiling serenely; “p’r’aps three.”

Mr. Grummit hesitated and his fists clenched nervously. The constable, lounging against his door-post, surveyed him with a dispassionate smile. “That would be besides what you’d get from me,” he said, softly.

“Come out in the road,” said Mr. Grummit, with sudden violence.

“It’s agin the rules,” said Mr. Evans; “sorry I can’t. Why not go and ask your wife’s brother to oblige you?”

He went in laughing and closed the door, and Mr. Grummit, after a frenzied outburst, proceeded on his way, returning the smiles of such acquaintances as he passed with an icy stare or a strongly-worded offer to make them laugh the other side of their face. The rest of the day he spent in working so hard that he had no time to reply to the anxious inquiries of his fellow-workmen.