III.
February 18th.—A week has passed away fairly peacefully, and now the last fresh trouble is that we have got to fumigate this house with a very dangerous mixture of vitriol and prussic acid to kill various non-paying guests, such as mice, mosquitoes, etc.—the etceteras being the worst of them all.
Six-and-eightpence had to sleep in the cottage two nights because he had such a very bad cold, and in the morning, when we asked him was it nice sleeping in a room again, he replied, with his usual courtesy, "I should have slept excellently but for the moss—quitoes." Six-and-eightpence is very prim and precise. He never says "mosquitoes" like other people, but always "moss—quitoes," the "quitoes" coming some time after the "moss." Every morning after that he appeared at breakfast with some polite remark about the "moss—quitoes."
"Would a net be any use?" I asked; "for you can have mine." But Six-and-eightpence says that nets would be no use for the special kind of wingless "moss—quito" that apparently infests this cottage at night.
The mere idea was unbearable, and that evening one of the men brought down the Agricultural Journal.
"Here's a chapter," said he, "on the only effective way to rid a house of Six-and-eightpence's moss—quitoes. It's very dangerous, and the chapter concludes with directions and pictures as to how to revive anyone who is caught by the fumes before they can bolt. It's much the same as for drowned people. You work their arms and legs up and down, don't you know, and pull out their tongues, and so on."
"Oh, dear," put in Veronica, "I don't feel up to any more dangers. The thunderstorms have stopped for a bit, and I'm longing for some peace. It's not two days since Jaikeran used Jay's Purifier for the pudding instead of milk, finding some mixed ready in a jug, and then put nails and screws into the pudding in mistake for cloves. And what I feel is, do let's have a spell of rest!"
"The thunderstorms may come on any day again," said Mr. H——, "and I don't like moss—quitoes any more than Six-and-eightpence does, and we might have to turn into the house to sleep."
"Decidedly," said our solicitor, trying to scratch his shoulder-blades as gracefully as might be. "I am for exterminating the moss—quitoes."
So it's to be done. We have spent evenings reading up the directions, and it is plain we run the risk of losing our lives, for when the chemist at the nearest town received our order for enough vitriol and prussic acid to finish off a colony, he protested and refused to supply it, making sure some huge plot was on to wipe out the population. Someone is always writing to the papers to say that some section of the community must be got rid of for the good of the country, and the chemist said he would have nothing to do with it.
"But," explained our solicitor, "it's for—ahem—moss—quitoes."
"Oh," said the chemist, greatly relieved, "all right, then; but you must sign for it, please, sir. And I suppose you know the risks? One drop of this vitriol splashing into your face will burn to the bone. As for the prussic acid, a grain wafted by the wind to your open mouth, and you're a dead man."
"Thank you," said Six-and-eightpence, trying to look as if the prospect rather pleased him than otherwise; "good morning!"
Six-and-eightpence sent me a message by the butcher—would I come in to help him carry back the ingredients? The other men had declined, saying they were his moss—quitoes, not theirs, and he was afraid, if he tried to carry eight gallon-bottles of vitriol and nine jars of cyanide (which is prussic acid) down the hill to our cottage, they might fall, and the vitriol burn out his eyes. So I went in to help.
The prussic acid was all sealed up in a most important manner with huge Government seals, and the chemist said good-bye to us as if he would be surprised to see us again.
You get into the train to come here at a level crossing where there is no station, and when you get out at another crossing you yell, as I said before, to the engine-driver, and if he can manage it he stops, though sometimes he can't stop till he has got some way off. This happened with the vitriol and things. They were strewed along the level crossing, and when the train flew past too far they had to be hastily picked up, and as the vitriol was in ordinary whisky-bottles (the corks put in loose, so that it shouldn't splash when we wanted to open them) it was an awful business.
"Hi, there!" said Six-and-eightpence to the guard, who, blithely unconscious of the nature of the bottles he was sweeping up off the line into his arms, began putting them down with bangs close to an old lady with several young children round her. "Hi! Easy! That's vitriol!"
"And pray, sir," said the old lady, who seemed convinced that the only purpose vitriol could have been invented for was to throw into people's faces, "and may I ask what you are doing with vitriol here? Guard, what does all this mean? Heaven knows, this country is infested with enough criminals without our being obliged to travel with vitriol-throwing ruffians!"
"My dear madam," said Six-and-eightpence, politely, "who said that I intended throwing this vitriol at anyone?"
"Of course you intend throwing it at someone!" said the old lady, indignantly. "Do you think I was born yesterday, sir? Do you think I never read the papers? Do you think I don't know what vitriol is for? Guard, stop the train and summon a policeman! At once!"
Luckily we arrived at our stopping-place in five minutes, or what would have happened I don't know. Six-and-eightpence had retreated into the extreme corner of the carriage, clasping the vitriol bottles in his arms and in vain entreating the old lady not to attack him tooth and nail, or she certainly would get the stuff into her face.
We were thankful to find ourselves out on the open veldt.
February 20th.—It's late at night, and I am writing up this record of the doings of Simplicity Hall because by to-morrow evening I may either be unconscious or be sitting contemplating the dead bodies of everybody else, for we all get up very early to-morrow morning to fumigate this house with hydrocyanic gas.
Every chink has to be closed up to make it effective, and for four mortal hours this evening we have all been cutting brown paper into strips and standing on ladders and chairs pasting up the very badly-fitting doors and windows of this abode so that none of the precious and deadly gas shall escape.
The process is that you first place in each room four receptacles for the ingredients, which when mixed instantly kill everything near—men, beasts, or insects. You have to clear out of the house all food of every kind, all plates, dishes, saucepans, and jugs—in fact, the entire contents of the kitchen; also anything in the way of furniture, clothes, ornaments, pictures, etc., that you don't want to have bleached out of recognition. The Agricultural Journal blithely informs you that the process "causes no inconvenience of any kind," as all you "need remove from the house (to a safe distance) are——" and then follow the above items, which we soon discovered to mean that the entire house had to be dismantled and every stick in it hauled out on to the veldt. You naturally don't want anything you have to be bleached to a cinder, so out it all has to come. The lifting, the shouting, the dragging, and the running to and fro have lasted till now—midnight. Being a fine night, and the barometer high, we decided to get everything out so that at daylight the fumigation could be started, after which everyone has to rush helter-skelter through the doors, shut them, lock them, and paste a notice on them to say whoever goes inside is a dead man. (The Transvaal law compels this.) Then you sit all day on the veldt upon your possessions till eight hours have passed, after which the thing is done, and you start to fix up your house again the same as when you first came into it.
"WE DECIDED TO GET EVERYTHING OUT."
There is a full moon, and by it we can see all our possessions strewed round Simplicity Hall for about half a square mile. Tall cupboards tower towards the stars, the dining-room table has all the chairs and Mr. H——'s packing-case piled on to it, and dressing-tables stand about, hung with bits of everyone's wardrobe, a pyjama suit floating in the breeze here, a lady's nightdress there. In the centre of the circus, in an open ring, sits Jaikeran on the kitchen range (which likewise had to be removed, said the Agricultural Journal, "unless you wished to have your oven permeated with prussic acid," the editor evidently thinking it possible that such might be our wish). In this fashion does our domestic prepare, in some sort of style, an evening meal for us on a "Puffing Billy" stove set on the grass.
Everybody is in a temper, and once more the Simple Life is subjected to curses low and deep, as we all sit balancing ourselves on odd pieces of furniture, eating by the light of tallow candles which eternally go out.
We should have done the horrid thing at night and let it work while we all slept in the tents, but the chemist warned us not to dream of attempting it in anything like dusk or darkness. Each person has to be told off to stand ready in one room with their allowance of vitriol, and the prussic acid safely fastened up in a paper bag, tied at the mouth with a long piece of string, so that you can drop it into the vitriol and get away before the fumes suffocate you; which happens in one and a half seconds exactly.
Should you stumble in the dark over something, nothing can save you, though they tell the rescuers how to get on their hands and knees with their heads in a wet blanket, and crawl close to the floor, in the event of a friend being caught, and a cheerful illustration of four corpses in a row is appended. Six-and-eightpence is a very highly-strung man, and is already in a state of nervousness about the whole thing, bordering on hydrophobia or suicidal mania. Anyhow, he has been talking all the evening in a very despondent way, bequeathing things (such as the old Ratner safe in his office, his "Van Dam on Divorce," his book of trout flies, his kaross, etc.) to one or the other of us, "just in case anything happens," he says. And we are quite certain that were we to attempt to do this thing at night something would happen for certain. Six-and-eightpence would lose his head, and either lock himself or someone else into one of the rooms after the stuff had been mixed, forgetting which side of the door he was on, or something like that. Or the MacPhairson would be too long and too careful over his mixing and fall senseless; and then, however much we should like to, how could we leave him to die? One of us would have to get into a wet blanket (first pumping the water out of the well half a mile away, by the by) and go to his rescue, and, of course, be overpowered in turn. Someone else would then have to go to them, and soon it would be like the ten little nigger-boys—"And then there were none."
So, talking it over—and the pasting-up of the house having taken us till long after dark—we decided to wait until the friendly daylight.
We are now retiring to rest, and all bade each other "Good night" much as shipwrecked castaways would do on an open raft in mid-ocean, with sharks waiting for them, and only someone's blanket and each other left to eat. I'm not at all sure that I wouldn't rather put up with the "moss—quitoes" than all this.
February 29th.—I was aroused at daylight on the 21st by Veronica saying, in sepulchral tones, "The day has arrived, E——. Get up."
I've always pictured that's how the warder rouses condemned criminals from their slumbers, after which somebody else appears with the cheerful query (as Jaikeran now did) as to what you would like for your last breakfast.
The criminal, to judge by narratives, invariably "does himself proud" over that last breakfast, ordering steak and oysters, kidneys on toast, and all kinds of things that can't possibly have time to do him any good.
We each ordered our own favourite dish, and sat down on odd pieces of furniture or boxes to eat it, and gazing at the wide scene of peace around, with the beauty of the typical African morning (it being a very rare thing in Africa to wake to a wet morning), we remarked in turn what a "lovely world it was," and other dying speeches of that sort, and then rose to repair to the house, where the tins had been placed overnight in the rooms, the prussic acid and the vitriol all ready in rows of bottles on a tray, and nothing to do now but the fateful mixing.
"Now," said the Electrical Engineer (who, having passed in electricity, is supposed to know something about everything else under the sun), "everyone will please take jugs and go and pour your water each into your own cans in the room allotted to you. Then come back here for the vitriol, each carrying your mask."
By the chemist's advice we had made ourselves thick masks of felt, covering the nose and mouth, with slits for the eyes.
These, as soon as the water had been poured into the cans—Jaikeran standing looking on at these preparations with a countenance of terror—we each tied over our faces with tapes. Then we all started to feel our way back into the dining-room, where our vitriol was to be doled out to us.
"My eye isn't big enough," groaned Veronica. "I can't see where I am going. Someone please cut the slits larger for me." And Veronica sat down, and then each of us in turn, while the others stood and applied scissors to the slits, at the imminent risk of cutting out our eyes.
No one could breathe, and the panting in the room was awful.
"Come here," said the Electrical Engineer to Jaikeran, "and have your mask on, you Jaikeran."
Jaikeran, trembling like a leaf, fell on his two knees to the Electrical Engineer and held up his hands in prayer.
"Sahib have mercy on Jaikeran!" he quavered. "Sahib no kill poor Jaikeran this time! Sahib spare my life, and sahib have tit-for-tat." When the Electrical Engineer said, "Don't be a fool!" and tried to fix his mask on for him, he made for the open door, and the exasperated Electrical Engineer started to chase him round and round the cottage.
We would have let him go back to his home—a patch of mealies, two cows, a hut, and a skinny brother—shining clearly about three miles away on the broad table of green, but we had to have Jaikeran to help; so the Electrical Engineer caught him, assured him that (if we could manage it) no one would die that day, and, leading him back by the scruff of his neck, it seemed as if now, at last, all was once more ready.
"I am of o—pinion," said Six-and-eightpence, when we once more stood ready round the table in the dining-room, "that we should each be armed with a wet blanket in case of necessity."
"Jaikeran," said I, "go to the tents and fetch the blankets. Juldee!"
"Now," said the Electrical Engineer, "go, Jaikeran, to the well and fetch a bucket of water, and keep your mask on, Jaikeran; it's too much trouble to fix again. You can see your way through the eyelet holes."
So Jaikeran departed in his mask across the veldt for the water, and returned with a string of affrighted Dutch villagers behind him.
"For certain they are dynamiters," said one old back-veldt Boer.
"Or coiners," said another.
"No," whispered a third. "It is as I told you. The English are all mad. The Indian servant-man says it is to be a mosquito hunt! And each one engaged in it risks his life! Who but lunatics would act so?"
The Dutch contingent now made a kind of cordon round the house and watched proceedings closely, in case it should be necessary to send a runner for the police from the nearest town.
Meanwhile we in the garden proceeded to soak our blankets, wrapped our heads in them, and, re-entering the house, assembled again round the dining-room table and announced we really were ready at last.
"The heat is too cruel!" suddenly said Veronica. "Couldn't we have something to drink before we begin? If not, I shall faint."
It was by this time getting on for 11 a.m., and a cloudless day, such as you expect in the Rand midsummer, and what with the felt masks and the blankets and the fright we were all in, we were in an awful state, and so it was imperative that whisky should be served out to the men and lemonade and sal volatile to the ladies.
"And how are we to drink it?" said someone from under his mask.
"Sit down all of you," said the Electrical Engineer, "and I'll come round and pour it into your mouths while each of you lifts your mask slightly up. We can't undo them now." So we sat in a row, and the villagers crowding towards the house beheld the operation. One of them said this sort of thing could not be permitted to go on, and so he rushed after a cart going up the hill towards the town and told the driver to make for the police-station and tell the mounted police they were wanted at once.
"Are you all ready?" said the Electrical Engineer. "Then come to the table and I'll dole out the vitriol first."
We each stood with a tin pannikin and received the stuff, though it was difficult from under our masks and blankets to see whether it was going into the pannikins or over our hands or feet, which a single drop would, of course, burn to the bone.
"Go quickly," shouted the Electrical Engineer when it was done, "and pour it into the water in the tins. I quite forgot, when I decided on tin pans, that the corrosive fluid will burn through the tin in two minutes. Run!"
"How can we run," howled Mr. H——, holding his at arm's length and jerking himself towards the room he had to do, "with this thrice-infernal stuff under our noses?"
"If you don't you'll have no nose left," shouted the Electrical Engineer, making for his own room.
We all got rid of our vitriol without mishap to ourselves, flinging the cans when finished to the floor, where they instantly burnt large holes in the carpets, which had been left standing to get fumigated too.
"Bang goes six pound seven and eight three-farthings!" the MacPhairson was heard to mutter, as a frizzling noise heralded the cremation of his Axminster—bought second-hand for Simplicity Hall. "It's no' me as will beleeve anny more in the Simple Life!"
We next collected to receive our bags of cyanide. We all stood round while the Electrical Engineer uncorked the big sealed bottles and started removing the prussic acid, which was in powder and lumps, each lump being large enough to polish off a town full of people. We drew our masks very close over our mouths during this part of the proceedings. The back doors, and, indeed, all the doors, had to be left wide open through which to effect our escape the instant the chemicals mixed, and we all knew that if one speck of the poison floated down anyone's throat, that person was done for. A joyous breeze blew through the cottage, and the prussic-acid powder flew about and no one dared breathe, much less speak.
The Electrical Engineer poured the lumps and powder into our paper bags, Jaikeran standing by, his mask on, a blanket round his head, and his knees simply knocking together.
"Now," said the Electrical Engineer, "the moment has arrived! Keep your heads! Each take your bag, please" (out went all our hands), "and walk quietly into your allotted rooms. Carry the bag by its string, held well away from you. Walk up to the tins, where the water and the vitriol will be already mingled. Slight fumes will be already rising, so don't go too near. Drop your bags into the vitriol and water, and instantly, without one second's delay, rush from the house, shutting and locking doors behind you. Jaikeran! Clear out, unless you want to die!"
Before we each reached our allotted room, Jaikeran was making for the horizon and his skinny brother, and we haven't seen him since....
There was a deathly silence as we each entered the different rooms. It is impossible to say what we looked like—for a moving lump of dripping blanket was all that could be seen of anyone.
"What the dickens!" shouted Mr. H——, colliding with Six-and-eightpence in his room. "Who and what are you? Get out of my way!"
"My dear fellow, whoever you are," said the muffled voice of Six-and-eightpence, "this is my room. I can't see a thing. Where the dickens are the tins of vitriol?"
"Is that you, Six-and-eightpence?" said Mr. H——.
"Yes. Is it you?" responded the other. "This isn't your room, old chap; it's mine. Yours is next door. For Heaven's sake, get out. The others have thrown in their stuff. They're off. We shall be overpowered, I tell you."
"Well, I can't find my room," said Mr. H——, desperately. "Here, throw the stuff down anywhere. I'm off; come on."
As it turned out later, Six-and-eightpence's prussic acid did go into the tins, or at any rate most of it. But Mr. H—— lost his head, thinking he could smell through his blanket the deadly fumes already pouring from the other rooms, and, hearing everyone else making a dash for the open air, he upset his with a crash.
He rushed for what he thought was the door, but it was the window, all pasted up. His blanketed head went crash at the glass, luckily not breaking it, and then, realizing that he had made a mistake, he groped round for the door. But—it was shut and locked! Muffled in his blanket, Six-and-eightpence, thinking Mr. H—— had gone out before him, had run out, slamming and locking the door behind him! His prussic acid was already mingling with the vitriol. Mr. H—— could smell it!
When we all got outside we threw off our masks and blankets, and someone said, "Where is H——?"
"He's not here!"
"Then he must be in the house!"
"Good heavens! Not here?" said Six-and-eightpence, looking round him in a dazed way and rubbing his eyes. "Why, yes; I must have done—yes! I've locked him into my room! This comes of our being muffled in these blankets!"
"Good heavens, man!" yelled the Electrical Engineer, "he'll be dead by now!"
We all made a run for the house, clean forgetting our blankets, and burst open the hall door again.
It was strange; but there were not half the fumes we expected. What did it mean?... However, we did not stop to inquire....
Six-and-eightpence dragged open his bedroom door, and there, prone on the floor, lay Mr. H——, rolled in his blanket and kicking faintly. "Who's there?" he demanded. "I'm almost done for, you fellows!"
"Wonder you're not done for entirely," said they, hauling him out by his blanket and the hair of his head combined. "Didn't we say old Six-and-eightpence would do just this? Out you come!"
And in a few seconds the rescued one lay on the veldt, and kneeling beside him we all cried, "Saved!" and tried very hard to shed tears of joy....
The day passed somehow, all sitting on the veldt, and Mr. H—— (in the only arm-chair, propped up affectionately with pillows) described to us in moving terms what it had felt like to be face to face with death.
"Did you see the whole of your past life laid before you in a flash—like they say drowning people always do?" we asked.
"Yes," said Mr. H——, in tones of gloomy triumph; "I did, and I can tell you it wasn't pleasant."
Privately, I wasn't surprised to hear it, though I didn't say so.
"What was it like—the going off under the fumes?" asked someone else.
"It was like being rocked to sleep," said Mr. H——, in a sentimental tone. "And I heard church bells ringing, and I said to myself, 'They are ringing for my funeral. My poor, poor mother! And the guv'nor, too! This will bring their grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.'"
"Please don't talk of it!" cried Veronica, wiping her eyes. "I feel (I don't know if you do, E——?) that this should be a lesson to us all to be more charitable to each other. I didn't believe, Mr. H——, and I must freely confess it, that you had it in you to feel and speak like this! It shows how we may be mistaken."
"I don't wear my heart on my sleeve," replied the hero, languidly, leaning back in his chair. "I knew you all misunderstood me, but I made up my mind to bear it, certain that the truth must out, even though I didn't give a potato-masher to the establishment."
"And," said I, "truth is stranger than fiction any day."
The hero glanced sharply at me, for I was sitting gazing up at our roof-tree, and now and then I sniffed.
After a pause I said, sniffing again:—
"Does anyone smell a very strong smell of some gas—hydrocyanic gas, I suppose? Where is it coming from? We pasted up all the windows and doors," I added, rising from my chair.
Everybody now sniffed in turn, and all declared that the smell grew stronger and stronger.
Suddenly both I and Veronica gave a shout together.
"'WONDER YOU'RE NOT DONE FOR ENTIRELY,' SAID THEY, HAULING HIM OUT BY HIS BLANKET AND THE HAIR OF HIS HEAD."
"Veronica! Everybody!" I cried. "We pasted up the windows and doors and forgot to shut the ventilators of the chimneys. Every bit of gas has escaped! All our trouble has been for nothing. And as for your death throes, Mr. H——, well, I don't want to be rude, but it has all been——"
"Bunkum!" finished Willy-Nilly. "Church bells and all, old chap!"
At eve we re-entered the cottage—cautiously at first, then more boldly.
Nothing had happened—nothing at all!
Flies buzzed in hundreds around us as if they had enjoyed the nice aromatic bath they had had. Every scrap of gas had gaily escaped up the wide chimneys. It was two in the morning before we had got the cottage shipshape again, and the breakages and general damage would be hard to calculate.
"I've done with the Simple Life," said Mr. H——, the erstwhile hero of this memorable day. "If you don't mind, I think I'll leave. There's not enough repose about the life, don't you know."
"And I, too," said the MacPhairson. "It's too expensive! Me Axminster's ruined, me bagpipes have gone to glory, and me tent's in smithereens."
So these two have left.
As for those of us who still remain at Simplicity Hall, we have decided to leave the "moss—quitoes" and "etceteras" alone, hoping that, as we mean to sleep in the tents till the Rand winter comes on, we may in the end starve them out.
