Returning thus processionally through the sittingroom he was relieved to see only Mr Puffett’s ample base emerging from under the chimney-breast and to hear him utter loud groans and cries of self-encouragement which boomed hollow in the funnel of the brickwork. It is always pleasant to see a fellow-creature toiling still harder than one’s self.
In nothing has the whirligig of time so redressed the balance between the sexes as in this business of getting up in the morning. Woman, when not an adept of the Higher Beauty Culture, has now little to do beyond washing, stepping into a garment or so, and walking downstairs. Man, still slave to the button and the razor, clings to the ancient ceremonial potter and gets himself up by installments. Harriet was knotting her tie before the sound of splashing was heard in the next room. She accordingly classed her new possession as a confirmed potterer and made her way down by what Peter with more exactness than delicacy, had already named the Privy Stair. This led into a narrow passage, containing the modern convenience before-mentioned, a boot-hole and a cupboard with brooms in it, and debouched at length into the scullery and so to the back door.
The garden, at any rate, had been well looked after. Then were cabbages at the back, and celery trenches, also an asparagus bed well strawed up and a number of scientifically pruned apple-trees. There was also a small cold-house sheltering a hardy vine with half a dozen bunches of black grapes on it and a number of half-hardy plants in pots. In front of the house, a good show of dahlias and chrysanthemums and a bed of scarlet salvias lent colour to the sunshine Mr Noakes apparently had some little taste for gardening or at any rate a good gardener; and this was the pleasantest thing yet known of Mr Noakes, thought Harriet. She explored the potting-shed, where the tools were in good order, and found a pair of scissors, armed with which she made an assault upon the long trail of vine-leaves and the rigid bronze sheaves of the chrysanthemums. She grinned a little to find herself thus supplying the statutory ‘feminine touch’ to the household and, looking up, was rewarded with the sight of her husband. He was curled on the sill of the open window, in a dressing-gown, with The Times on his knee and a cigarette between his lips, and was trimming his nails in a thoughtful leisurely way, as though he had world and time enough at his disposal. At the other side of the casement, come from goodness knew where, was a large ginger cat, engaged in thoroughly licking one fore-paw before applying it to the back of its ear. The two sleek animals, delicately self-absorbed, sat on in a mandarin-like calm till the human one, with the restlessness of inferiority, lifted his eyes from his task, caught sight of Harriet and said ‘Hey!’-whereupon the cat rose up, affronted, and leapt out of sight.
‘That,’ said Peter, who had sometimes an uncanny way of echoing one’s own thoughts, ‘is a very dainty, ladylike occupation.’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Harriet. She stood on one leg to inspect the pound or two of garden mould adhering to her stout brogue shoe. ‘A garden is a lovesome thing. God wot.’
‘Her feet beneath her pettitcoat like little mice stole in and out,’ agreed his lordship gravely. ‘Can you tell me, rosy-fingered Aurora, whether the unfortunate person in the room below me is being slowly murdered or only having a fit?’
‘I was beginning to wonder myself,’ said Harriet; for strange, strangled cries were proceeding from the sittingroom. ‘Perhaps I had better go and find out.’
‘Must you go? You improve the scenery so much. I like a landscape with figures… Dear me! what a shocking sound-like Nell Cook under the paving-stone! It seemed to come right up into the room beside me. I am becoming a nervous wreck.’
‘You don’t look it. You look abominably placid and pleased with life.’
‘Well, so I am. But one should not be selfish in one’s happiness. I feel convinced that somewhere about the house there is a fellow-creature in trouble.’
At this point Bunter emerged from the front door, walking backwards across the strip of turf, with eyes cast upward as though seeking a heavenly revelation, and solemnly shook his head, like Lord Burleigh in The Critic.
‘Ain’t we there yet?’ cried the voice of Mrs Ruddle from the window.
‘No,’ said Bunter, returning, ‘we appear to be making no progress at all.’
‘It seems,’ said Peter, ‘that we are expecting a happy event. Parturiunt montes. At any rate, the creation seems to be groaning and travailing together a good deal.’
Harriet got off the flower-bed and scraped the earth her shoes with a garden label. ‘I shall cease to decorate the landscape and go and part of a domestic interior.’
Peter uncoiled himself from the window-sill, took off his dressing-gown and pulled away his blazer from under ginger cat.
‘All that’s the matter with this chimney, Mr Bunter,’ announced Mr Puffett, ‘is, sut.’ Having thus, as it were, come out by the same road as he had gone in, he began to draw his brush from the chimney, unscrewing it with extreme deliberation, rod by rod.
‘So,’ said Mr Bunter, with an inflection of sarcasm lost on Mr Puffett, ‘so we had inferred.’
‘That’s it,’ pursued Mr Puffett, ‘corroded sut. No chimney can’t draw when the pot’s full of corroded sut like this chimney-pot is. You can’t ask it. It ain’t reasonable.’
‘I don’t ask it,’ retorted Mr Bunter. ‘I ask you to get it clear, that’s all.’
‘Well now, Mr Bunter,’ said Mr Puffett, with an air of injury, ‘I put it to you to just take a look at this ’ere sut.’ He extended a grimy hand filled with what looked like clinkers. ‘’Ard as a crock, that sut is, corroded ’ard. That’s wot your chimney-pot’s full of, and you can’t get a brush through it, not with all the power you puts be’ind it. Near forty feet of rod I’ve got up that chimney, Mr Bunter, trying to get through the pot, and it ain’t fair on a man nor his rods.’ He pulled down another section of his apparatus and straightened it out with loving care.
‘Some means will have to be devised to penetrate the obstruction,’ said Mr Bunter, his eyes on the window, ‘and without delay. Her ladyship is coming in from the garden. You can take out the breakfast tray, Mrs Ruddle.’
‘Ah!’ said Mrs Ruddle, peeping under the dish-covers before lifting the tray from the radio cabinet where Bunter had set it down, ‘they’re taking their vittles well-that’s a good sign in a young couple. I remember when me and Ruddle was wed-’
‘And the lamps all need new wicks,’ added Bunter austerely, ‘and the burners cleaned before you fill them.’
‘Mr Noakes ain’t used no lamps this long time,’ said Mrs Ruddle, with a sniff. ‘Says ’e can see well enough by candlelight. Comes cheaper, I suppose.’ She flounced out with the tray and, encountering Harriet in the doorway, dropped a curtsy that sent the dish-covers sliding.
‘Oh, you’ve got the sweep, Bunter-that’s splendid! We thought we heard something going on.’
‘Yes, my lady. Mr Puffett has been good enough to oblige. But I understand that he has encountered some impenetrable obstacle in the upper portion of the chimney.’
‘How kind of you to come. Mr Puffett. We had a dreadful time last night.’
Judging from the sweep’s eye that propitiation was advisable, Harriet extended her hand. Mr Puffett looked at it, looked at his own, pulled up his sweaters to get at his trousers pocket, extracted a newly laundered red-cotton handkerchief, shook it slowly from its folds, draped it across his palm and so grasped Harriet’s fingers, rather in the manner of a royal proxy bedding his master’s bride with the sheet between them. ‘Well, me lady.’ said Mr Puffett, ‘I’m allus willin’ to oblige. Not but what you’ll allow as a chimney wot’s choked like this chimney is ain’t fair to a man nor yet to ’is rods. But I will make bold to say that if any man can get the corroded sut out of this ’ere chimney-pot, I’m the man to do it. It’s experience, you see, that’s wot it is, and the power I puts be’ind it.’