[The Leopard Does Not Change His Spots]

(From Novel Notes, 1893)

Jephson arrived about nine o’clock in the ferry-boat. We were made acquainted with this fact by having our heads bumped against the sides of the saloon.

Somebody or other always had their head bumped whenever the ferry-boat arrived. It was a heavy and cumbersome machine, and the ferry-boy was not a good punter. He admitted this frankly, which was creditable of him. But he made no attempt to improve himself; that is, where he was wrong. His method was to arrange the punt before starting in a line with the point towards which he wished to proceed, and then to push hard, without ever looking behind him, until something suddenly stopped him. This was sometimes the bank, sometimes another boat, occasionally a steamer, from six to a dozen times a day our riparian dwelling. That he never succeeded in staving the houseboat in speaks highly for the man who built her.

One day he came down upon us with a tremendous crash. Amenda was walking along the passage at the moment, and the result to her was that she received a violent blow first on the left side of her head and then on the right.

She was accustomed to accept one bump as a matter of course, and to regard it as an intimation from the boy that he had come; but this double knock annoyed her: so much “style” was out of place in a mere ferry-boy. Accordingly she went out to him in a state of high indignation.

“What do you think you are?” she cried, balancing accounts by boxing his ears first on one side and then on the other, “a torpedo! What are you doing here at all? What do you want?”

“I don’t want nothin’,” explained the boy, rubbing his head; “I’ve brought a gent down.”

“A gent?” said Amenda, looking round, but seeing no one. “What gent?”

“A stout gent in a straw ’at,” answered the boy, staring round him bewilderedly.

“Well, where is he?” asked Amenda.

“I dunno,” replied the boy, in an awed voice; “’e was a-standin’ there, at the other end of the punt, a-smokin’ a cigar.”

Just then a head appeared above the water, and a spent but infuriated swimmer struggled up between the houseboat and the bank.

“Oh, there ’e is!” cried the boy delightedly, evidently much relieved at this satisfactory solution of the mystery; “’e must ha’ tumbled off the punt.”

“You’re quite right, my lad, that’s just what he did do, and there’s your fee for assisting him to do it.” Saying which, my dripping friend, who had now scrambled upon deck, leant over, and following Amenda’s excellent example, expressed his feelings upon the boy’s head.

There was one comforting reflection about the transaction as a whole, and that was that the ferry-boy had at last received a fit and proper reward for his services. I had often felt inclined to give him something myself. I think he was, without exception, the most clumsy and stupid boy I have ever come across; and that is saying a good deal.

His mother undertook that for three-and-sixpence a week he should “make himself generally useful” to us for a couple of hours every morning.

Those were the old lady’s very words, and I repeated them to Amenda when I introduced the boy to her.

“This is James, Amenda,” I said; “he will come down here every morning at seven, and bring us our milk and the letters, and from then till nine he will make himself generally useful.”

Amenda took stock of him.

“It will be a change of occupation for him, sir, I should say, by the look of him,” she remarked.

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 halfway 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 supernatural. 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.