The Surprise of Mr. Milberry
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 749.
J.K. Jerome
[The story was told to the author by Henry, an attendant in a hotel at a small town near Stratf ord-upon- Avon in England.]
It was the strangest story and I shall never forget it. A young man came by the bus that meets the 4.52 train. He had a handbag and a kind of hamper1. He wouldn't let anybody touch it, but carried it up to his bedroom himself. He carried it in front of him in his arms. Once he fell going up the stairs and knocked his head badly, but he did not drop that hamper. I could see he was nervous and excited, but people very often are like that in hotels.
This man interested me, he was very young and serious looking. I followed him up into his room and asked him if I could do anything for him. He put the hamper on the bed with relief2, took off his hat, and then turned to answer me.
"Are you a married man?" said he. It was a strange question to put to an attendant.
"Well, not exactly," said I. "I am only engaged, but I know a lot about it, and if it's matter of advice—"
"It isn't that," he answered, "but I don't want you to laugh at me. I thought if you were a married man, you would be able to understand the thing better. Have you got an intelligent woman in the house?"
"We've got women," I said. "As to their intelligence that's difficult to say. Shall I call the maid?"
"Ah, do," he said. "Wait a minute. We'll open it first."
He began to open the hamper, then suddenly stopped and said: "No, you open it. Open it carefully. It will surprise you."
"What's in it?" I asked.
"You'll see, if you open it," he said.
Then I had an idea and asked him: "It isn't a dead body, is it?"
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He became white and said: "Good God! I never thought of that. Open it quickly."
I cut the cord3, opened the hamper, and looked in. He kept his eyes turned away because he was frightened to look at it.
"Is it all right?" he asked. "Is it alive?"
"Yes, of course, quite alive."
"Is it breathing all right?" he asked.
"If you can't hear it breathing," I said, "I'm afraid you're deaf."
He listened and said nothing. Then he sat down in the chair by the fire. "You know," he said, "I've never thought of that. He was shut up in the hamper for over an hour, what if there was not enough air... Oh, I'll never do it again."
"Do you love it?" I asked.
"Love it?" he repeated. "Why, I'm his father."
"Oh," I said. "Then I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Coster King?"4
"Coster King?" he answered in surprise. "My name is Milberry."
I said: "According to the label inside the basket the father of this child is Coster King out of Starlight, his mother is Jenny Deans."
He looked at me nervously, then he came nearer and looked inside the basket. I never heard a man give such a yell in all my life. He stood on one side of the bed, and I on the other. The dog that was sleeping in the basket, woke and sat up. It was a bull-dog of about nine months old.
"My child," he cried. "That animal isn't my child. What's happened? Am I going mad?"
"You are nearly," said I, and so he was.
"What did you expect to see?" I asked.
"My child," he cried, "my only child—my baby!"
"Do you mean a real child?" I said.
"Of course I do," he said, "the most beautiful child you ever saw in all your life, just thirteen weeks on Sunday. He had his first tooth yesterday."
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The sight of the dog's face made him angry. He threw himself upon the hamper, but I stopped him.
"It's not the dog's fault5. He's lost too. Somebody played a joke on you. They took your baby out and put the dog in—that is, if there ever was a baby there."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Well, sir," I said, "if you'll excuse me, gentlemen in their sober senses don't take their babies about in hampers. Where do you come from?"
"From Banbury," he said; "I'm well-known in Banbury."
"I can quite believe it," I said, "you are the sort of young man that would be known anywhere."
"I'm Mr. Milberry," he said, "the grocer in this little town."
"Then what are you doing here with this dog?" I said.
"Don't make me angry," he answered. "I tell you I don't know myself. My wife is staying here, because her mother is ill, and in every letter that she's written home for the last two weeks, she's said: 'Oh, how I want to see Eric! If only I could see Eric for a moment!'"
"A very motherly feeling," I said.
"So this afternoon," continued he, "I decided to bring the child here so that she could see it, and see that it was all right. She can't-leave her mother for more than an hour, and I can't go up to the house because the old lady doesn't like me. I had to wait here, and Milly—that's my wife—was going to come here when she had time. I wanted this to be a surprise for her."
"And I think," I said, "it will be the biggest surprise you have ever given her."
"Don't try to joke," said he, "I'm very nervous now and I may knock you down!"
He was right. It wasn't a subject for joking.
"But why," said I, "did you put the baby into a hamper?"
"At the last moment I found I didn't have the courage to carry the child in my arms. He sleeps very well, and I thought that if I made him comfortable in this hamper,
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he would sleep during the journey, which is very short. I had the hamper with me all the time. How did it happen? It's magic! That's what it is."
"Don't be silly," I said, "there's some explanation and it must be found. You are sure this is the same hamper you packed the child in?" He came nearer and examined it carefully.
"It looks like it," he said, "but I am not sure."
"Now tell me," said I, "when did you put the hamper down?"
He thought and thought and then said: "Now I remember, I did put it down for a moment on the platform at Banbury, while I bought some biscuits."
"There you are," I said. "And isn't tomorrow the first day of the Birmingham Dog Show?"
"I think you're right," he said.
"Now we are coming somewhere," I said. "It so happened that this dog was taken to Birmingham, packed in a hamper exactly like the one you put your baby in. You've got this man's dog, he's got your baby. It's possible that he thinks, you've done it on purpose."6
Mr. Milberry put his head on his hands and groaned7. "Milly may be here at any moment," said he, "and I'll have to tell her the baby was sent by mistake to a Dog Show, I cannot do it."
"Go on to Birmingham," I said, "and try to find it. You can return in an hour."
"Come with me," he said, "you're a good man, come with me. I cannot go alone."
"Well," I said, "if the manager of the hotel allows me to go."
"Oh! He will, he must," cried the young man. "Tell him it's a matter of a life's happiness. Tell him—"
"I'll tell him it's a matter of more money for the room," I said. "That will help."
And so it did, with the result that in another twenty minutes I and young Milberry and the dog in its hamper were on our way to Birmingham. When we reached Birmingham we asked the station-master, and he asked all
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the porters who met the 5.13 train, but they all said that no man with a hamper had come by that train. The station-master was a family man himself, and when we explained everything to him, he telegraphed to Banbury.
But in Banbury only one man carrying a hamper had taken that train and that man was Mr. Milberry himself. The business began to look serious, when one of the newspaper boys said that he had seen an old lady with a hamper, getting into a cab.
With the help of the boy, we found the cabman who had taken the old lady to a small hotel.
I heard all the details from the maid at the hotel. They could not get the hamper into the cab and it had to go on top. The old lady was very worried as it was raining all the time, and she asked the cabman to cover it up. Taking it off the cab they dropped the hamper in the road; that woke the child up, and it began to cry.
"Good Lord, ma'am! What is it?" asked the maid. "A baby?"
"Yes, my dear, it's my baby," answered the old lady, who was a little deaf. "Poor dear, I hope it is all right."
The old lady had ordered a room with a fire in it. The maid brought the hamper into the room and the old lady began to cut the cord so as to open it. The baby inside was crying very loudly.
"Poor dear!" said the old lady. "Don't cry; mother's opening it as fast as she can." Then she turned to the maid. "If you open my bag," said she, "you will find a bottle of milk and some dog-biscuits."
"Dog-biscuits!" said the maid.
"Yes," said the old lady, laughing, "my baby loves dog-biscuits."
The maid opened the bag and found there the milk and the biscuits. She was standing with her back to the old lady and did not see her open the hamper, but she heard the sound of a fall.
When she looked round, she saw the old lady lying on the floor. The maid thought the old lady was dead. The
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child was sitting up in the hamper, crying loudly. The maid gave him a dog-biscuit which he began sucking8 greedily.
In about a minute the old lady opened her eyes and looked round. The baby was quiet now. The old lady looked at it and turned to the maid.
"What is it?" she asked, speaking in a frightened voice. "The thing in the hamper?"
"It's a baby, ma'am," said the maid.
"You're sure it isn't a dog?" asked the old lady. "Look again."
The maid began to feel nervous and to wish that she wasn't alone with the old lady.
"I cannot mistake a dog for a baby, ma'am," said the maid. "It's a child, a baby."
The old lady began to cry. "It's a punishment for me," she said, "because I often spoke to that dog as to a baby, and now this thing has happened."
"What has happened?" asked the maid who did not understand anything.
"I don't know," said the old lady, sitting up on the floor. "I started from my home two hours ago with a one-year-old dog in that hamper. You saw me open it, you see what's in it now."
"But dogs are not changed into babies by magic."
"I don't know how it's done," said the old lady. "I only know that I started with a dog."
"Somebody has put the baby there," said the maid, "somebody that wanted to get rid of the child. They have taken your dog and put the baby in its place."
"They must have been very quick," said the old lady. "I left the hamper for five minutes in Banbury, when I went to drink a cup of tea."
"That's when they did it," said the maid, "and a clever trick it was."
The old lady suddenly understood her position and jumped up from the floor.
"And a nice thing for me9," she said. "An unmarried woman with a baby. This is awful!"
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"It's a beautiful child," said the maid.
"Would you take it?" asked the old lady.
"Oh, no, I wouldn't," said the maid.
The old lady sat down and began to think, but she did not know what to do. At that moment somebody came up to the door and said: "Here is a young man with a dog." When the old lady saw Mr. Milberry with her dog in the hamper, she nearly went mad with joy.
And Mr. Milberry snatched10 the baby and kissed him. We just caught the train to our town and got back to the hotel ten minutes before the baby's mother came in.
I don't think Mr. Milberry ever told his wife what had happened.
NOTES:
1 hamper — êîðçèíà ñ êðûøêîé
2 with relief — ñ îáëåã÷åíèåì
3 cord — âåðåâêà
4 Coster King of Starlight — Êîñòåð Êèíã îò Ñòàðëàéò (î
ðîäîñëîâíîé ñîáàê)
5 fault — âèíà
6 on purpose — íàðî÷íî
7 groan — ñòîíàòü
8 suck — ñîñàòü
9 and a nice thing for me — à êàêîâî ìíå
10 snatch — ñõâàòèòü
Comprehension:
1) What was strange about the man who came to the
hotel?
2) Whom did the man ask to invite to his room and why?
3) Whom did Mr. Milberry expect to see in the hamper
and whom did he see?
4) How did it happen that he had taken another ham
per?
5) What did the old lady do when she saw a child in her
hamper?
6) Who helped Mr. Milberry to find his child?
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