CHAPTER I.
THREE INVALIDS. - SUFFERINGS OF
GEORGE AND HARRIS. - A VICTIM TO ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN FATAL MALADIES. -
USEFUL PRESCRIPTIONS. - CURE FOR LIVER COMPLAINT IN CHILDREN. - WE AGREE
THAT WE ARE OVERWORKED, AND NEED REST. - A WEEK ON THE ROLLING DEEP? -
GEORGE SUGGESTS THE RIVER. - MONTMORENCY LODGES AN OBJECTION. - ORIGINAL
MOTION CARRIED BY MAJORITY OF THREE TO ONE.
THERE were four of us - George, and William Samuel Harris,
and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and
talking about how bad we were - bad from a medical point of view I mean, of
course.
We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous
about it. Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over
him at times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said
that HE had fits of giddiness too, and hardly knew what HE was doing. With
me, it was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver that was
out of order, because I had just been reading a patent liver-pill circular,
in which were detailed the various symptoms by which a man could tell when
his liver was out of order. I had them all.
It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent
medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am
suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most
virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with
all the sensations that I have ever felt.
I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up
the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch - hay fever, I
fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in
an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently
study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged
into - some fearful, devastating scourge, I know - and, before I had glanced
half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I
had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the
listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid
fever - read the symptoms - discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have
had it for months without knowing it - wondered what else I had got; turned
up St. Vitus's Dance - found, as I expected, that I had that too, - began to
get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so
started alphabetically - read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for
it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight.
Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form,
and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had,
with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I
plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady
I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.
I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to
be a sort of slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious
reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I
reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I
grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee. Gout, in
its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being
aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood.
There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing
else the matter with me.
I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I
must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a
class! Students would have no need to "walk the hospitals," if they had me.
I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and,
after that, take their diploma.
Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine
myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then,
all of a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it.
I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart.
I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been induced
to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time, and must
have been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted myself all over my
front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and I went a bit round each
side, and a little way up the back. But I could not feel or hear anything. I
tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out as far as ever it would go, and I
shut one eye, and tried to examine it with the other. I could only see the
tip, and the only thing that I could gain from that was to feel more certain
than before that I had scarlet fever.
I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I
crawled out a decrepit wreck.
I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and
feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for
nothing, when I fancy I'm ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by
going to him now. "What a doctor wants," I said, "is practice. He shall have
me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of
your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each." So
I went straight up and saw him, and he said:
"Well, what's the matter with you?"
I said:
"I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you
what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I
had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not
got housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's knee, I cannot tell
you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however,
I HAVE got."
And I told him how I came to discover it all.
Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of
my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn't expecting it - a
cowardly thing to do, I call it - and immediately afterwards butted me with
the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription,
and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.
I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist's, and
handed it in.
The man read it, and then handed it back.
He said he didn't keep it.
I said:
"You are a chemist?"
He said:
"I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family
hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers
me."
I read the prescription. It ran:
"1 lb. beefsteak, with 1 pt. bitter
beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning. 1 bed at 11 sharp every
night. And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand."
I followed the directions, with the
happy result - speaking for myself - that my life was preserved, and is
still going on.
In the present instance, going back to the liver-pill
circular, I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being
"a general disinclination to work of any kind."
What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my
earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly
ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver.
Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to
put it down to laziness.
"Why, you skulking little devil, you," they would say, "get
up and do something for your living, can't you?" - not knowing, of course,
that I was ill.
And they didn't give me pills; they gave me clumps on the
side of the head. And, strange as it may appear, those clumps on the head
often cured me - for the time being. I have known one clump on the head have
more effect upon my liver, and make me feel more anxious to go straight away
then and there, and do what was wanted to be done, without further loss of
time, than a whole box of pills does now.
You know, it often is so - those simple, old-fashioned
remedies are sometimes more efficacious than all the dispensary stuff.
We sat there for half-an-hour, describing to each other our
maladies. I explained to George and William Harris how I felt when I got up
in the morning, and William Harris told us how he felt when he went to bed;
and George stood on the hearth-rug, and gave us a clever and powerful piece
of acting, illustrative of how he felt in the night.
George FANCIES he is ill; but there's never anything really
the matter with him, you know.
At this point, Mrs. Poppets knocked at the door to know if
we were ready for supper. We smiled sadly at one another, and said we
supposed we had better try to swallow a bit. Harris said a little something
in one's stomach often kept the disease in check; and Mrs. Poppets brought
the tray in, and we drew up to the table, and toyed with a little steak and
onions, and some rhubarb tart.
I must have been very weak at the time; because I know,
after the first half-hour or so, I seemed to take no interest whatever in my
food - an unusual thing for me - and I didn't want any cheese.
This duty done, we refilled our glasses, lit our pipes, and
resumed the discussion upon our state of health. What it was that was
actually the matter with us, we none of us could be sure of; but the
unanimous opinion was that it - whatever it was - had been brought on by
overwork.
"What we want is rest," said Harris.
"Rest and a complete change," said George. "The overstrain
upon our brains has produced a general depression throughout the system.
Change of scene, and absence of the necessity for thought, will restore the
mental equilibrium."
George has a cousin, who is usually described in the
charge-sheet as a medical student, so that he naturally has a somewhat
family-physicianary way of putting things.
I agreed with George, and suggested that we should seek out
some retired and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, and dream away
a sunny week among its drowsy lanes - some half-forgotten nook, hidden away
by the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world - some quaint-perched eyrie
on the cliffs of Time, from whence the surging waves of the nineteenth
century would sound far-off and faint.
Harris said he thought it would be humpy. He said he knew
the sort of place I meant; where everybody went to bed at eight o'clock, and
you couldn't get a REFEREE for love or money, and had to walk ten miles to
get your baccy.
"No," said Harris, "if you want rest and change, you can't
beat a sea trip."
I objected to the sea trip strongly. A sea trip does you
good when you are going to have a couple of months of it, but, for a week,
it is wicked.
You start on Monday with the idea implanted in your bosom
that you are going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu to the boys on
shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were
Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus all rolled into
one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn't come. On Wednesday, Thursday, and
Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a
little beef tea, and to sit up on deck, and answer with a wan, sweet smile
when kind-hearted people ask you how you feel now. On Sunday, you begin to
walk about again, and take solid food. And on Monday morning, as, with your
bag and umbrella in your hand, you stand by the gunwale, waiting to step
ashore, you begin to thoroughly like it.
I remember my brother-in-law going for a short sea trip
once, for the benefit of his health. He took a return berth from London to
Liverpool; and when he got to Liverpool, the only thing he was anxious about
was to sell that return ticket.
It was offered round the town at a tremendous reduction, so
I am told; and was eventually sold for eighteenpence to a bilious-looking
youth who had just been advised by his medical men to go to the sea-side,
and take exercise.
"Sea-side!" said my brother-in-law, pressing the ticket
affectionately into his hand; "why, you'll have enough to last you a
lifetime; and as for exercise! why, you'll get more exercise, sitting down
on that ship, than you would turning somersaults on dry land."
He himself - my brother-in-law - came back by train. He said
the North-
Western Railway was healthy enough for him.
Another fellow I knew went for a week's voyage round the
coast, and, before they started, the steward came to him to ask whether he
would pay for each meal as he had it, or arrange beforehand for the whole
series.
The steward recommended the latter course, as it would come
so much cheaper. He said they would do him for the whole week at two pounds
five. He said for breakfast there would be fish, followed by a grill. Lunch
was at one, and consisted of four courses. Dinner at six - soup, fish,
entree, joint, poultry, salad, sweets, cheese, and dessert. And a light meat
supper at ten.
My friend thought he would close on the two-pound-five job
(he is a hearty eater), and did so.
Lunch came just as they were off Sheerness. He didn't feel
so hungry as he thought he should, and so contented himself with a bit of
boiled beef, and some strawberries and cream. He pondered a good deal during
the afternoon, and at one time it seemed to him that he had been eating
nothing but boiled beef for weeks, and at other times it seemed that he must
have been living on strawberries and cream for years.
Neither the beef nor the strawberries and cream seemed
happy, either - seemed discontented like.
At six, they came and told him dinner was ready. The
announcement aroused no enthusiasm within him, but he felt that there was
some of that two-pound-five to be worked off, and he held on to ropes and
things and went down. A pleasant odour of onions and hot ham, mingled with
fried fish and greens, greeted him at the bottom of the ladder; and then the
steward came up with an oily smile, and said:
"What can I get you, sir?"
"Get me out of this," was the feeble reply.
And they ran him up quick, and propped him up, over to
leeward, and left him.
For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life
on thin captain's biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the
captain) and soda-water; but, towards Saturday, he got uppish, and went in
for weak tea and dry toast, and on Monday he was gorging himself on chicken
broth. He left the ship on Tuesday, and as it steamed away from the
landing-stage he gazed after it regretfully.
"There she goes," he said, "there she goes, with two pounds'
worth of food on board that belongs to me, and that I haven't had."
He said that if they had given him another day he thought he
could have put it straight.
So I set my face against the sea trip. Not, as I explained,
upon my own account. I was never queer. But I was afraid for George. George
said he should be all right, and would rather like it, but he would advise
Harris and me not to think of it, as he felt sure we should both be ill.
Harris said that, to himself, it was always a mystery how people managed to
get sick at sea - said he thought people must do it on purpose, from
affectation - said he had often wished to be, but had never been able.
Then he told us anecdotes of how he had gone across the
Channel when it was so rough that the passengers had to be tied into their
berths, and he and the captain were the only two living souls on board who
were not ill. Sometimes it was he and the second mate who were not ill; but
it was generally he and one other man. If not he and another man, then it
was he by himself.
It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land.
At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads
of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what
it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors
that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.
If most men were like a fellow I saw on the Yarmouth boat
one day, I could account for the seeming enigma easily enough. It was just
off Southend Pier, I recollect, and he was leaning out through one of the
port-holes in a very dangerous position. I went up to him to try and save
him.
"Hi! come further in," I said, shaking him by the shoulder.
"You'll be overboard."
"Oh my! I wish I was," was the only answer I could get; and
there I had to leave him.
Three weeks afterwards, I met him in the coffee-room of a
Bath hotel, talking about his voyages, and explaining, with enthusiasm, how
he loved the sea.
"Good sailor!" he replied in answer to a mild young man's
envious query; "well, I did feel a little queer ONCE, I confess. It was off
Cape Horn. The vessel was wrecked the next morning."
I said:
"Weren't you a little shaky by Southend Pier one day, and
wanted to be thrown overboard?"
"Southend Pier!" he replied, with a puzzled expression.
"Yes; going down to Yarmouth, last Friday three weeks."
"Oh, ah - yes," he answered, brightening up; "I remember
now. I did have a headache that afternoon. It was the pickles, you know.
They were the most disgraceful pickles I ever tasted in a respectable boat.
Did you have any?"
For myself, I have discovered an excellent preventive
against sea- sickness, in balancing myself. You stand in the centre of the
deck, and, as the ship heaves and pitches, you move your body about, so as
to keep it always straight. When the front of the ship rises, you lean
forward, till the deck almost touches your nose; and when its back end gets
up, you lean backwards. This is all very well for an hour or two; but you
can't balance yourself for a week.
George said:
"Let's go up the river."
He said we should have fresh air, exercise and quiet; the
constant change of scene would occupy our minds (including what there was of
Harris's); and the hard work would give us a good appetite, and make us
sleep well.
Harris said he didn't think George ought to do anything that
would have a tendency to make him sleepier than he always was, as it might
be dangerous.
He said he didn't very well understand how George was going
to sleep any more than he did now, seeing that there were only twenty-four
hours in each day, summer and winter alike; but thought that if he DID sleep
any more, he might just as well be dead, and so save his board and lodging.
Harris said, however, that the river would suit him to a
"T." I don't know what a "T" is (except a sixpenny one, which includes
bread-and- butter and cake AD LIB., and is cheap at the price, if you
haven't had any dinner). It seems to suit everybody, however, which is
greatly to its credit.
It suited me to a "T" too, and Harris and I both said it was
a good idea of George's; and we said it in a tone that seemed to somehow
imply that we were surprised that George should have come out so sensible.
The only one who was not struck with the suggestion was
Montmorency. He never did care for the river, did Montmorency.
"It's all very well for you fellows," he says; "you like it,
but I don't. There's nothing for me to do. Scenery is not in my line, and I
don't smoke. If I see a rat, you won't stop; and if I go to sleep, you get
fooling about with the boat, and slop me overboard. If you ask me, I call
the whole thing bally foolishness."
We were three to one, however, and the motion was carried.
CHAPTER II.
PLANS DISCUSSED. - PLEASURES OF
"CAMPING-OUT," ON FINE NIGHTS. - DITTO, WET NIGHTS. - COMPROMISE DECIDED ON.
- MONTMORENCY, FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF. - FEARS LEST HE IS TOO GOOD FOR THIS
WORLD, FEARS SUBSEQUENTLY DISMISSED AS GROUNDLESS. - MEETING ADJOURNS.
WE pulled out the maps, and discussed plans.
We arranged to start on the following Saturday from
Kingston. Harris and I would go down in the morning, and take the boat up to
Chertsey, and George, who would not be able to get away from the City till
the afternoon (George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day,
except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two), would
meet us there.
Should we "camp out" or sleep at inns?
George and I were for camping out. We said it would be so
wild and free, so patriarchal like.
Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the
hearts of the cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds
have ceased their song, and only the moorhen's plaintive cry and the harsh
croak of the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters, where
the dying day breathes out her last.
From the dim woods on either bank, Night's ghostly army, the
grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering
rear- guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the
waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her
sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from
her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness.
Then we run our little boat into some quiet nook, and the
tent is pitched, and the frugal supper cooked and eaten. Then the big pipes
are filled and lighted, and the pleasant chat goes round in musical
undertone; while, in the pauses of our talk, the river, playing round the
boat, prattles strange old tales and secrets, sings low the old child's song
that it has sung so many thousand years - will sing so many thousand years
to come, before its voice grows harsh and old - a song that we, who have
learnt to love its changing face, who have so often nestled on its yielding
bosom, think, somehow, we understand, though we could not tell you in mere
words the story that we listen to.
And we sit there, by its margin, while the moon, who loves
it too, stoops down to kiss it with a sister's kiss, and throws her silver
arms around it clingingly; and we watch it as it flows, ever singing, ever
whispering, out to meet its king, the sea - till our voices die away in
silence, and the pipes go out - till we, common-place, everyday young men
enough, feel strangely full of thoughts, half sad, half sweet, and do not
care or want to speak - till we laugh, and, rising, knock the ashes from our
burnt-out pipes, and say "Good-night," and, lulled by the lapping water and
the rustling trees, we fall asleep beneath the great, still stars, and dream
that the world is young again - young and sweet as she used to be ere the
centuries of fret and care had furrowed her fair face, ere her children's
sins and follies had made old her loving heart - sweet as she was in those
bygone days when, a new-made mother, she nursed us, her children, upon her
own deep breast - ere the wiles of painted civilization had lured us away
from her fond arms, and the poisoned sneers of artificiality had made us
ashamed of the simple life we led with her, and the simple, stately home
where mankind was born so many thousands years ago.
Harris said:
"How about when it rained?"
You can never rouse Harris. There is no poetry about Harris
- no wild yearning for the unattainable. Harris never "weeps, he knows not
why." If Harris's eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because Harris has
been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcester over his chop.
If you were to stand at night by the sea-shore with Harris,
and say:
"Hark! do you not hear? Is it but the mermaids singing deep
below the waving waters; or sad spirits, chanting dirges for white corpses,
held by seaweed?" Harris would take you by the arm, and say:
"I know what it is, old man; you've got a chill. Now, you
come along with me. I know a place round the corner here, where you can get
a drop of the finest Scotch whisky you ever tasted - put you right in less
than no time."
Harris always does know a place round the corner where you
can get something brilliant in the drinking line. I believe that if you met
Harris up in Paradise (supposing such a thing likely), he would immediately
greet you with:
"So glad you've come, old fellow; I've found a nice place
round the corner here, where you can get some really first-class nectar."
In the present instance, however, as regarded the camping
out, his practical view of the matter came as a very timely hint. Camping
out in rainy weather is not pleasant.
It is evening. You are wet through, and there is a good two
inches of water in the boat, and all the things are damp. You find a place
on the banks that is not quite so puddly as other places you have seen, and
you land and lug out the tent, and two of you proceed to fix it.
It is soaked and heavy, and it flops about, and tumbles down
on you, and clings round your head and makes you mad. The rain is pouring
steadily down all the time. It is difficult enough to fix a tent in dry
weather: in wet, the task becomes herculean. Instead of helping you, it
seems to you that the other man is simply playing the fool. Just as you get
your side beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end, and spoils it
all.
"Here! what are you up to?" you call out.
"What are YOU up to?" he retorts; "leggo, can't you?"
"Don't pull it; you've got it all wrong, you stupid ass!"
you shout.
"No, I haven't," he yells back; "let go your side!"
"I tell you you've got it all wrong!" you roar, wishing that
you could get at him; and you give your ropes a lug that pulls all his pegs
out.
"Ah, the bally idiot!" you hear him mutter to himself; and
then comes a savage haul, and away goes your side. You lay down the mallet
and start to go round and tell him what you think about the whole business,
and, at the same time, he starts round in the same direction to come and
explain his views to you. And you follow each other round and round,
swearing at one another, until the tent tumbles down in a heap, and leaves
you looking at each other across its ruins, when you both indignantly
exclaim, in the same breath:
"There you are! what did I tell you?"
Meanwhile the third man, who has been baling out the boat,
and who has spilled the water down his sleeve, and has been cursing away to
himself steadily for the last ten minutes, wants to know what the thundering
blazes you're playing at, and why the blarmed tent isn't up yet.
At last, somehow or other, it does get up, and you land the
things. It is hopeless attempting to make a wood fire, so you light the
methylated spirit stove, and crowd round that.
Rainwater is the chief article of diet at supper. The bread
is two- thirds rainwater, the beefsteak-pie is exceedingly rich in it, and
the jam, and the butter, and the salt, and the coffee have all combined with
it to make soup.
After supper, you find your tobacco is damp, and you cannot
smoke. Luckily you have a bottle of the stuff that cheers and inebriates, if
taken in proper quantity, and this restores to you sufficient interest in
life to induce you to go to bed.
There you dream that an elephant has suddenly sat down on
your chest, and that the volcano has exploded and thrown you down to the
bottom of the sea - the elephant still sleeping peacefully on your bosom.
You wake up and grasp the idea that something terrible really has happened.
Your first impression is that the end of the world has come; and then you
think that this cannot be, and that it is thieves and murderers, or else
fire, and this opinion you express in the usual method. No help comes,
however, and all you know is that thousands of people are kicking you, and
you are being smothered.
Somebody else seems in trouble, too. You can hear his faint
cries coming from underneath your bed. Determining, at all events, to sell
your life dearly, you struggle frantically, hitting out right and left with
arms and legs, and yelling lustily the while, and at last something gives
way, and you find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off, you dimly
observe a half-dressed ruffian, waiting to kill you, and you are preparing
for a life-and-death struggle with him, when it begins to dawn upon you that
it's Jim.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" he says, recognising you at the same
moment.
"Yes," you answer, rubbing your eyes; "what's happened?"
"Bally tent's blown down, I think," he says.
"Where's Bill?"
Then you both raise up your voices and shout for "Bill!" and
the ground beneath you heaves and rocks, and the muffled voice that you
heard before replies from out the ruin:
"Get off my head, can't you?"
And Bill struggles out, a muddy, trampled wreck, and in an
unnecessarily aggressive mood - he being under the evident belief that the
whole thing has been done on purpose.
In the morning you are all three speechless, owing to having
caught severe colds in the night; you also feel very quarrelsome, and you
swear at each other in hoarse whispers during the whole of breakfast time.
We therefore decided that we would sleep out on fine nights;
and hotel it, and inn it, and pub. it, like respectable folks, when it was
wet, or when we felt inclined for a change.
Montmorency hailed this compromise with much approval. He
does not revel in romantic solitude. Give him something noisy; and if a
trifle low, so much the jollier. To look at Montmorency you would imagine
that he was an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason withheld from
mankind, in the shape of a small fox-terrier. There is a sort of
Oh-what-a-wicked-
world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-something-to-make-it-better-and-
nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring the tears
into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen.
When first he came to live at my expense, I never thought I
should be able to get him to stop long. I used to sit down and look at him,
as he sat on the rug and looked up at me, and think: "Oh, that dog will
never live. He will be snatched up to the bright skies in a chariot, that is
what will happen to him."
But, when I had paid for about a dozen chickens that he had
killed; and had dragged him, growling and kicking, by the scruff of his
neck, out of a hundred and fourteen street fights; and had had a dead cat
brought round for my inspection by an irate female, who called me a
murderer; and had been summoned by the man next door but one for having a
ferocious dog at large, that had kept him pinned up in his own tool-shed,
afraid to venture his nose outside the door for over two hours on a cold
night; and had learned that the gardener, unknown to myself, had won thirty
shillings by backing him to kill rats against time, then I began to think
that maybe they'd let him remain on earth for a bit longer, after all.
To hang about a stable, and collect a gang of the most
disreputable dogs to be found in the town, and lead them out to march round
the slums to fight other disreputable dogs, is Montmorency's idea of "life;"
and so, as I before observed, he gave to the suggestion of inns, and pubs.,
and hotels his most emphatic approbation.
Having thus settled the sleeping arrangements to the
satisfaction of all four of us, the only thing left to discuss was what we
should take with us; and this we had begun to argue, when Harris said he'd
had enough oratory for one night, and proposed that we should go out and
have a smile, saying that he had found a place, round by the square, where
you could really get a drop of Irish worth drinking.
George said he felt thirsty (I never knew George when he
didn't); and, as I had a presentiment that a little whisky, warm, with a
slice of lemon, would do my complaint good, the debate was, by common
assent, adjourned to the following night; and the assembly put on its hats
and went out.
CHAPTER III.
ARRANGEMENTS SETTLED. - HARRIS'S
METHOD OF DOING WORK. - HOW THE ELDERLY, FAMILY-MAN PUTS UP A PICTURE. -
GEORGE MAKES A SENSIBLE, REMARK. - DELIGHTS OF EARLY MORNING BATHING. -
PROVISIONS FOR GETTING UPSET.
SO, on the following evening, we again assembled, to discuss
and arrange our plans. Harris said:
"Now, the first thing to settle is what to take with us.
Now, you get a bit of paper and write down, J., and you get the grocery
catalogue, George, and somebody give me a bit of pencil, and then I'll make
out a list."
That's Harris all over - so ready to take the burden of
everything himself, and put it on the backs of other people.
He always reminds me of my poor Uncle Podger. You never saw
such a commotion up and down a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle
Podger undertook to do a job. A picture would have come home from the frame-
maker's, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and Aunt
Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would say:
"Oh, you leave that to ME. Don't you, any of you, worry
yourselves about that. I'LL do all that."
And then he would take off his coat, and begin. He would
send the girl out for sixpen'orth of nails, and then one of the boys after
her to tell her what size to get; and, from that, he would gradually work
down, and start the whole house.
"Now you go and get me my hammer, Will," he would shout;
"and you bring me the rule, Tom; and I shall want the step-ladder, and I had
better have a kitchen-chair, too; and, Jim! you run round to Mr. Goggles,
and tell him, `Pa's kind regards, and hopes his leg's better; and will he
lend him his spirit-level?' And don't you go, Maria, because I shall want
somebody to hold me the light; and when the girl comes back, she must go out
again for a bit of picture-cord; and Tom! - where's Tom? - Tom, you come
here; I shall want you to hand me up the picture."
And then he would lift up the picture, and drop it, and it
would come out of the frame, and he would try to save the glass, and cut
himself; and then he would spring round the room, looking for his
handkerchief. He could not find his handkerchief, because it was in the
pocket of the coat he had taken off, and he did not know where he had put
the coat, and all the house had to leave off looking for his tools, and
start looking for his coat; while he would dance round and hinder them.
"Doesn't anybody in the whole house know where my coat is? I
never came across such a set in all my life - upon my word I didn't. Six of
you! - and you can't find a coat that I put down not five minutes ago! Well,
of all the - "
Then he'd get up, and find that he had been sitting on it,
and would call out:
"Oh, you can give it up! I've found it myself now. Might
just as well ask the cat to find anything as expect you people to find it."
And, when half an hour had been spent in tying up his
finger, and a new glass had been got, and the tools, and the ladder, and the
chair, and the candle had been brought, he would have another go, the whole
family, including the girl and the charwoman, standing round in a
semi-circle, ready to help. Two people would have to hold the chair, and a
third would help him up on it, and hold him there, and a fourth would hand
him a nail, and a fifth would pass him up the hammer, and he would take hold
of the nail, and drop it.
"There!" he would say, in an injured tone, "now the nail's
gone."
And we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel for
it, while he would stand on the chair, and grunt, and want to know if he was
to be kept there all the evening.
The nail would be found at last, but by that time he would
have lost the hammer.
"Where's the hammer? What did I do with the hammer? Great
heavens! Seven of you, gaping round there, and you don't know what I did
with the hammer!"
We would find the hammer for him, and then he would have
lost sight of the mark he had made on the wall, where the nail was to go in,
and each of us had to get up on the chair, beside him, and see if we could
find it; and we would each discover it in a different place, and he would
call us all fools, one after another, and tell us to get down. And he would
take the rule, and re-measure, and find that he wanted half thirty-one and
three-eighths inches from the corner, and would try to do it in his head,
and go mad.
And we would all try to do it in our heads, and all arrive
at different results, and sneer at one another. And in the general row, the
original number would be forgotten, and Uncle Podger would have to measure
it again.
He would use a bit of string this time, and at the critical
moment, when the old fool was leaning over the chair at an angle of
forty-five, and trying to reach a point three inches beyond what was
possible for him to reach, the string would slip, and down he would slide on
to the piano, a really fine musical effect being produced by the suddenness
with which his head and body struck all the notes at the same time.
And Aunt Maria would say that she would not allow the
children to stand round and hear such language.
At last, Uncle Podger would get the spot fixed again, and
put the point of the nail on it with his left hand, and take the hammer in
his right hand. And, with the first blow, he would smash his thumb, and drop
the hammer, with a yell, on somebody's toes.
Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger
was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he'd let her know in
time, so that she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her
mother while it was being done.
"Oh! you women, you make such a fuss over everything," Uncle
Podger would reply, picking himself up. "Why, I LIKE doing a little job of
this sort."
And then he would have another try, and, at the second blow,
the nail would go clean through the plaster, and half the hammer after it,
and Uncle Podger be precipitated against the wall with force nearly
sufficient to flatten his nose.
Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new
hole was made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up - very crooked
and insecure, the wall for yards round looking as if it had been smoothed
down with a rake, and everybody dead beat and wretched - except Uncle
Podger.
"There you are," he would say, stepping heavily off the
chair on to the charwoman's corns, and surveying the mess he had made with
evident pride. "Why, some people would have had a man in to do a little
thing like that!"
Harris will be just that sort of man when he grows up, I
know, and I told him so. I said I could not permit him to take so much
labour upon himself. I said:
"No; YOU get the paper, and the pencil, and the catalogue,
and George write down, and I'll do the work."
The first list we made out had to be discarded. It was clear
that the upper reaches of the Thames would not allow of the navigation of a
boat sufficiently large to take the things we had set down as indispensable;
so we tore the list up, and looked at one another!
George said:
"You know we are on a wrong track altogether. We must not
think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't
do without."
George comes out really quite sensible at times. You'd be
surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present
case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life, generally. How
many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of
swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the
pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.
How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine
clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends
that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence
for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and
fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with - oh, heaviest, maddest
lumber of all! - the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries
that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the
criminal's iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that
wears it!
It is lumber, man - all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes
the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so
cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom from
anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness - no time
to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or the
glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great
trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green
and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre- waving rushes, or
the sedges, or the orchis, or the blue forget-me-nots.
Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light,
packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or
two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat,
a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little
more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not
be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset;
good, plain merchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as
well as to work. Time to drink in life's sunshine - time to listen to the
AEolian music that the wind of God draws from the human heart-strings around
us - time to -
I beg your pardon, really. I quite forgot.
Well, we left the list to George, and he began it.
"We won't take a tent, suggested George; "we will have a
boat with a cover. It is ever so much simpler, and more comfortable."
It seemed a good thought, and we adopted it. I do not know
whether you have ever seen the thing I mean. You fix iron hoops up over the
boat, and stretch a huge canvas over them, and fasten it down all round,
from stem to stern, and it converts the boat into a sort of little house,
and it is beautifully cosy, though a trifle stuffy; but there, everything
has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they
came down upon him for the funeral expenses.
George said that in that case we must take a rug each, a
lamp, some soap, a brush and comb (between us), a toothbrush (each), a
basin, some tooth- powder, some shaving tackle (sounds like a French
exercise, doesn't it?), and a couple of big-towels for bathing. I notice
that people always make gigantic arrangements for bathing when they are
going anywhere near the water, but that they don't bathe much when they are
there.
It is the same when you go to the sea-side. I always
determine - when thinking over the matter in London - that I'll get up early
every morning, and go and have a dip before breakfast, and I religiously
pack up a pair of drawers and a bath towel. I always get red bathing
drawers. I rather fancy myself in red drawers. They suit my complexion so.
But when I get to the sea I don't feel somehow that I want that early
morning bathe nearly so much as I did when I was in town.
On the contrary, I feel more that I want to stop in bed till
the last moment, and then come down and have my breakfast. Once or twice
virtue has triumphed, and I have got out at six and half-dressed myself, and
have taken my drawers and towel, and stumbled dismally off. But I haven't
enjoyed it. They seem to keep a specially cutting east wind, waiting for me,
when I go to bathe in the early morning; and they pick out all the
three-cornered stones, and put them on the top, and they sharpen up the
rocks and cover the points over with a bit of sand so that I can't see them,
and they take the sea and put it two miles out, so that I have to huddle
myself up in my arms and hop, shivering, through six inches of water. And
when I do get to the sea, it is rough and quite insulting.
One huge wave catches me up and chucks me in a sitting
posture, as hard as ever it can, down on to a rock which has been put there
for me. And, before I've said "Oh! Ugh!" and found out what has gone, the
wave comes back and carries me out to mid-ocean. I begin to strike out
frantically for the shore, and wonder if I shall ever see home and friends
again, and wish I'd been kinder to my little sister when a boy (when I was a
boy, I mean). Just when I have given up all hope, a wave retires and leaves
me sprawling like a star-fish on the sand, and I get up and look back and
find that I've been swimming for my life in two feet of water. I hop back
and dress, and crawl home, where I have to pretend I liked it.
In the present instance, we all talked as if we were going
to have a long swim every morning.
George said it was so pleasant to wake up in the boat in the
fresh morning, and plunge into the limpid river. Harris said there was
nothing like a swim before breakfast to give you an appetite. He said it
always gave him an appetite. George said that if it was going to make Harris
eat more than Harris ordinarily ate, then he should protest against Harris
having a bath at all.
He said there would be quite enough hard work in towing
sufficient food for Harris up against stream, as it was.
I urged upon George, however, how much pleasanter it would
be to have Harris clean and fresh about the boat, even if we did have to
take a few more hundredweight of provisions; and he got to see it in my
light, and withdrew his opposition to Harris's bath.
Agreed, finally, that we should take THREE bath towels, so
as not to keep each other waiting.
For clothes, George said two suits of flannel would be
sufficient, as we could wash them ourselves, in the river, when they got
dirty. We asked him if he had ever tried washing flannels in the river, and
he replied: "No, not exactly himself like; but he knew some fellows who had,
and it was easy enough;" and Harris and I were weak enough to fancy he knew
what he was talking about, and that three respectable young men, without
position or influence, and with no experience in washing, could really clean
their own shirts and trousers in the river Thames with a bit of soap.
We were to learn in the days to come, when it was too late,
that George was a miserable impostor, who could evidently have known nothing
whatever about the matter. If you had seen these clothes after - but, as the
shilling shockers say, we anticipate.
George impressed upon us to take a change of under-things
and plenty of socks, in case we got upset and wanted a change; also plenty
of handkerchiefs, as they would do to wipe things, and a pair of leather
boots as well as our boating shoes, as we should want them if we got upset.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FOOD QUESTION. -
OBJECTIONS TO PARAFFINE OIL AS AN ATMOSPHERE. - ADVANTAGES OF CHEESE AS A
TRAVELLING COMPANION. - A MARRIED WOMAN DESERTS HER HOME. - FURTHER
PROVISION FOR GETTING UPSET. - I PACK. - CUSSEDNESS OF TOOTH-BRUSHES. -
GEORGE AND HARRIS PACK. - AWFUL BEHAVIOUR OF MONTMORENCY. - WE RETIRE TO
REST.
THEN we discussed the food question. George said:
"Begin with breakfast." (George is so practical.) "Now for
breakfast we shall want a frying-pan" - (Harris said it was indigestible;
but we merely urged him not to be an ass, and George went on) - "a tea-pot
and a kettle, and a methylated spirit stove."
"No oil," said George, with a significant look; and Harris
and I agreed.
We had taken up an oil-stove once, but "never again." It had
been like living in an oil-shop that week. It oozed. I never saw such a
thing as paraffine oil is to ooze. We kept it in the nose of the boat, and,
from there, it oozed down to the rudder, impregnating the whole boat and
everything in it on its way, and it oozed over the river, and saturated the
scenery and spoilt the atmosphere. Sometimes a westerly oily wind blew, and
at other times an easterly oily wind, and sometimes it blew a northerly oily
wind, and maybe a southerly oily wind; but whether it came from the Arctic
snows, or was raised in the waste of the desert sands, it came alike to us
laden with the fragrance of paraffine oil.
And that oil oozed up and ruined the sunset; and as for the
moonbeams, they positively reeked of paraffine.
We tried to get away from it at Marlow. We left the boat by
the bridge, and took a walk through the town to escape it, but it followed
us. The whole town was full of oil. We passed through the church-yard, and
it seemed as if the people had been buried in oil. The High Street stunk of
oil; we wondered how people could live in it. And we walked miles upon miles
out Birmingham way; but it was no use, the country was steeped in oil.
At the end of that trip we met together at midnight in a
lonely field, under a blasted oak, and took an awful oath (we had been
swearing for a whole week about the thing in an ordinary, middle-class way,
but this was a swell affair) - an awful oath never to take paraffine oil
with us in a boat again-except, of course, in case of sickness.
Therefore, in the present instance, we confined ourselves to
methylated spirit. Even that is bad enough. You get methylated pie and
methylated cake. But methylated spirit is more wholesome when taken into the
system in large quantities than paraffine oil.
For other breakfast things, George suggested eggs and bacon,
which were easy to cook, cold meat, tea, bread and butter, and jam. For
lunch, he said, we could have biscuits, cold meat, bread and butter, and jam
- but NO CHEESE. Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself. It wants the
whole boat to itself. It goes through the hamper, and gives a cheesy flavour
to everything else there. You can't tell whether you are eating apple-pie or
German sausage, or strawberries and cream. It all seems cheese. There is too
much odour about cheese.
I remember a friend of mine, buying a couple of cheeses at
Liverpool. Splendid cheeses they were, ripe and mellow, and with a two
hundred horse-power scent about them that might have been warranted to carry
three miles, and knock a man over at two hundred yards. I was in Liverpool
at the time, and my friend said that if I didn't mind he would get me to
take them back with me to London, as he should not be coming up for a day or
two himself, and he did not think the cheeses ought to be kept much longer.
"Oh, with pleasure, dear boy," I replied, "with pleasure."
I called for the cheeses, and took them away in a cab. It
was a ramshackle affair, dragged along by a knock-kneed, broken-winded
somnambulist, which his owner, in a moment of enthusiasm, during
conversation, referred to as a horse. I put the cheeses on the top, and we
started off at a shamble that would have done credit to the swiftest
steam-roller ever built, and all went merry as a funeral bell, until we
turned the corner. There, the wind carried a whiff from the cheeses full on
to our steed. It woke him up, and, with a snort of terror, he dashed off at
three miles an hour. The wind still blew in his direction, and before we
reached the end of the street he was laying himself out at the rate of
nearly four miles an hour, leaving the cripples and stout old ladies simply
nowhere.
It took two porters as well as the driver to hold him in at
the station; and I do not think they would have done it, even then, had not
one of the men had the presence of mind to put a handkerchief over his nose,
and to light a bit of brown paper.
I took my ticket, and marched proudly up the platform, with
my cheeses, the people falling back respectfully on either side. The train
was crowded, and I had to get into a carriage where there were already seven
other people. One crusty old gentleman objected, but I got in,
notwithstanding; and, putting my cheeses upon the rack, squeezed down with a
pleasant smile, and said it was a warm day.
A few moments passed, and then the old gentleman began to
fidget.
"Very close in here," he said.
"Quite oppressive," said the man next him.
And then they both began sniffing, and, at the third sniff,
they caught it right on the chest, and rose up without another word and went
out. And then a stout lady got up, and said it was disgraceful that a
respectable married woman should be harried about in this way, and gathered
up a bag and eight parcels and went. The remaining four passengers sat on
for a while, until a solemn-looking man in the corner, who, from his dress
and general appearance, seemed to belong to the undertaker class, said it
put him in mind of dead baby; and the other three passengers tried to get
out of the door at the same time, and hurt themselves.
I smiled at the black gentleman, and said I thought we were
going to have the carriage to ourselves; and he laughed pleasantly, and said
that some people made such a fuss over a little thing. But even he grew
strangely depressed after we had started, and so, when we reached Crewe, I
asked him to come and have a drink. He accepted, and we forced our way into
the buffet, where we yelled, and stamped, and waved our umbrellas for a
quarter of an hour; and then a young lady came, and asked us if we wanted
anything.
"What's yours?" I said, turning to my friend.
"I'll have half-a-crown's worth of brandy, neat, if you
please, miss," he responded.
And he went off quietly after he had drunk it and got into
another carriage, which I thought mean.
From Crewe I had the compartment to myself, though the train
was crowded. As we drew up at the different stations, the people, seeing my
empty carriage, would rush for it. "Here y' are, Maria; come along, plenty
of room." "All right, Tom; we'll get in here," they would shout. And they
would run along, carrying heavy bags, and fight round the door to get in
first. And one would open the door and mount the steps, and stagger back
into the arms of the man behind him; and they would all come and have a
sniff, and then droop off and squeeze into other carriages, or pay the
difference and go first.
From Euston, I took the cheeses down to my friend's house.
When his wife came into the room she smelt round for an instant. Then she
said:
"What is it? Tell me the worst."
I said:
"It's cheeses. Tom bought them in Liverpool, and asked me to
bring them up with me."
And I added that I hoped she understood that it had nothing
to do with me; and she said that she was sure of that, but that she would
speak to Tom about it when he came back.
My friend was detained in Liverpool longer than he expected;
and, three days later, as he hadn't returned home, his wife called on me.
She said:
"What did Tom say about those cheeses?"
I replied that he had directed they were to be kept in a
moist place, and that nobody was to touch them.
She said:
"Nobody's likely to touch them. Had he smelt them?"
I thought he had, and added that he seemed greatly attached
to them.
"You think he would be upset," she queried, "if I gave a man
a sovereign to take them away and bury them?"
I answered that I thought he would never smile again.
An idea struck her. She said:
"Do you mind keeping them for him? Let me send them round to
you."
"Madam," I replied, "for myself I like the smell of cheese,
and the journey the other day with them from Liverpool I shall ever look
back upon as a happy ending to a pleasant holiday. But, in this world, we
must consider others. The lady under whose roof I have the honour of
residing is a widow, and, for all I know, possibly an orphan too. She has a
strong, I may say an eloquent, objection to being what she terms `put upon.'
The presence of your husband's cheeses in her house she would, I
instinctively feel, regard as a `put upon'; and it shall never be said that
I put upon the widow and the orphan."
"Very well, then," said my friend's wife, rising, "all I
have to say is, that I shall take the children and go to an hotel until
those cheeses are eaten. I decline to live any longer in the same house with
them."
She kept her word, leaving the place in charge of the
charwoman, who, when asked if she could stand the smell, replied, "What
smell?" and who, when taken close to the cheeses and told to sniff hard,
said she could detect a faint odour of melons. It was argued from this that
little injury could result to the woman from the atmosphere, and she was
left.
The hotel bill came to fifteen guineas; and my friend, after
reckoning everything up, found that the cheeses had cost him
eight-and-sixpence a pound. He said he dearly loved a bit of cheese, but it
was beyond his means; so he determined to get rid of them. He threw them
into the canal; but had to fish them out again, as the bargemen complained.
They said it made them feel quite faint. And, after that, he took them one
dark night and left them in the parish mortuary. But the coroner discovered
them, and made a fearful fuss.
He said it was a plot to deprive him of his living by waking
up the corpses.
My friend got rid of them, at last, by taking them down to a
sea-side town, and burying them on the beach. It gained the place quite a
reputation. Visitors said they had never noticed before how strong the air
was, and weak-chested and consumptive people used to throng there for years
afterwards.
Fond as I am of cheese, therefore, I hold that George was
right in declining to take any.
"We shan't want any tea," said George (Harris's face fell at
this); "but we'll have a good round, square, slap-up meal at seven - dinner,
tea, and supper combined."
Harris grew more cheerful. George suggested meat and fruit
pies, cold meat, tomatoes, fruit, and green stuff. For drink, we took some
wonderful sticky concoction of Harris's, which you mixed with water and
called lemonade, plenty of tea, and a bottle of whisky, in case, as George
said, we got upset.
It seemed to me that George harped too much on the
getting-upset idea.
It seemed to me the wrong spirit to go about the trip in.
But I'm glad we took the whisky.
We didn't take beer or wine. They are a mistake up the
river. They make you feel sleepy and heavy. A glass in the evening when you
are doing a mouch round the town and looking at the girls is all right
enough; but don't drink when the sun is blazing down on your head, and
you've got hard work to do.
We made a list of the things to be taken, and a pretty
lengthy one it was, before we parted that evening. The next day, which was
Friday, we got them all together, and met in the evening to pack. We got a
big Gladstone for the clothes, and a couple of hampers for the victuals and
the cooking utensils. We moved the table up against the window, piled
everything in a heap in the middle of the floor, and sat round and looked at
it.
I said I'd pack.
I rather pride myself on my packing. Packing is one of those
many things that I feel I know more about than any other person living. (It
surprises me myself, sometimes, how many of these subjects there are.) I
impressed the fact upon George and Harris, and told them that they had
better leave the whole matter entirely to me. They fell into the suggestion
with a readiness that had something uncanny about it. George put on a pipe
and spread himself over the easy-chair, and Harris cocked his legs on the
table and lit a cigar.
This was hardly what I intended. What I had meant, of
course, was, that I should boss the job, and that Harris and George should
potter about under my directions, I pushing them aside every now and then
with, "Oh, you - !" "Here, let me do it." "There you are, simple enough!" -
really teaching them, as you might say. Their taking it in the way they did
irritated me. There is nothing does irritate me more than seeing other
people sitting about doing nothing when I'm working.
I lived with a man once who used to make me mad that way. He
would loll on the sofa and watch me doing things by the hour together,
following me round the room with his eyes, wherever I went. He said it did
him real good to look on at me, messing about. He said it made him feel that
life was not an idle dream to be gaped and yawned through, but a noble task,
full of duty and stern work. He said he often wondered now how he could have
gone on before he met me, never having anybody to look at while they worked.
Now, I'm not like that. I can't sit still and see another
man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round
with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic
nature. I can't help it.
However, I did not say anything, but started the packing. It
seemed a longer job than I had thought it was going to be; but I got the bag
finished at last, and I sat on it and strapped it.
"Ain't you going to put the boots in?" said Harris.
And I looked round, and found I had forgotten them. That's
just like Harris. He couldn't have said a word until I'd got the bag shut
and strapped, of course. And George laughed - one of those irritating,
senseless, chuckle-headed, crack-jawed laughs of his. They do make me so
wild.
I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as
I was going to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my
tooth- brush? I don't know how it is, but I never do know whether I've
packed my tooth-brush.
My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I'm
travelling, and makes my life a misery. I dream that I haven't packed it,
and wake up in a cold perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for it. And,
in the morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to
get it, and it is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I
repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment
and carry it to the railway station, wrapped up in my pocket- handkerchief.
Of course I had to turn every mortal thing out now, and, of
course, I could not find it. I rummaged the things up into much the same
state that they must have been before the world was created, and when chaos
reigned. Of course, I found George's and Harris's eighteen times over, but I
couldn't find my own. I put the things back one by one, and held everything
up and shook it. Then I found it inside a boot. I repacked once more.
When I had finished, George asked if the soap was in. I said
I didn't care a hang whether the soap was in or whether it wasn't; and I
slammed the bag to and strapped it, and found that I had packed my
tobacco-pouch in it, and had to re-open it. It got shut up finally at 10.5
p.m., and then there remained the hampers to do. Harris said that we should
be wanting to start in less than twelve hours' time, and thought that he and
George had better do the rest; and I agreed and sat down, and they had a go.
They began in a light-hearted spirit, evidently intending to
show me how to do it. I made no comment; I only waited. When George is
hanged, Harris will be the worst packer in this world; and I looked at the
piles of plates and cups, and kettles, and bottles and jars, and pies, and
stoves, and cakes, and tomatoes, &c., and felt that the thing would soon
become exciting.
It did. They started with breaking a cup. That was the first
thing they did. They did that just to show you what they COULD do, and to
get you interested.
Then Harris packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato and
squashed it, and they had to pick out the tomato with a teaspoon.
And then it was George's turn, and he trod on the butter. I
didn't say anything, but I came over and sat on the edge of the table and
watched them. It irritated them more than anything I could have said. I felt
that. It made them nervous and excited, and they stepped on things, and put
things behind them, and then couldn't find them when they wanted them; and
they packed the pies at the bottom, and put heavy things on top, and smashed
the pies in.
They upset salt over everything, and as for the butter! I
never saw two men do more with one-and-twopence worth of butter in my whole
life than they did. After George had got it off his slipper, they tried to
put it in the kettle. It wouldn't go in, and what WAS in wouldn't come out.
They did scrape it out at last, and put it down on a chair, and Harris sat
on it, and it stuck to him, and they went looking for it all over the room.
"I'll take my oath I put it down on that chair," said
George, staring at the empty seat.
"I saw you do it myself, not a minute ago," said Harris.
Then they started round the room again looking for it; and
then they met again in the centre, and stared at one another.
"Most extraordinary thing I ever heard of," said George.
"So mysterious!" said Harris.
Then George got round at the back of Harris and saw it.
"Why, here it is all the time," he exclaimed, indignantly.
"Where?" cried Harris, spinning round.
"Stand still, can't you!" roared George, flying after him.
And they got it off, and packed it in the teapot.
Montmorency was in it all, of course. Montmorency's ambition
in life, is to get in the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere
where he particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make
people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day has
not been wasted.
To get somebody to stumble over him, and curse him steadily
for an hour, is his highest aim and object; and, when he has succeeded in
accomplishing this, his conceit becomes quite unbearable.
He came and sat down on things, just when they were wanted
to be packed; and he laboured under the fixed belief that, whenever Harris
or George reached out their hand for anything, it was his cold, damp nose
that they wanted. He put his leg into the jam, and he worried the teaspoons,
and he pretended that the lemons were rats, and got into the hamper and
killed three of them before Harris could land him with the frying-pan.
Harris said I encouraged him. I didn't encourage him. A dog
like that don't want any encouragement. It's the natural, original sin that
is born in him that makes him do things like that.
The packing was done at 12.50; and Harris sat on the big
hamper, and said he hoped nothing would be found broken. George said that if
anything was broken it was broken, which reflection seemed to comfort him.
He also said he was ready for bed.
We were all ready for bed. Harris was to sleep with us that
night, and we went upstairs.
We tossed for beds, and Harris had to sleep with me. He
said:
"Do you prefer the inside or the outside, J.?"
I said I generally preferred to sleep INSIDE a bed.
Harris said it was old.
George said:
"What time shall I wake you fellows?"
Harris said:
"Seven."
I said:
"No - six," because I wanted to write some letters.
Harris and I had a bit of a row over it, but at last split
the difference, and said half-past six.
"Wake us at 6.30, George," we said.
George made no answer, and we found, on going over, that he
had been asleep for some time; so we placed the bath where he could tumble
into it on getting out in the morning, and went to bed ourselves.
CHAPTER V.
MRS. P. AROUSES US. - GEORGE, THE
SLUGGARD. - THE "WEATHER FORECAST" SWINDLE. - OUR LUGGAGE. - DEPRAVITY OF
THE SMALL BOY. - THE PEOPLE GATHER ROUND US. - WE DRIVE OFF IN GREAT STYLE,
AND ARRIVE AT WATERLOO. - INNOCENCE OF SOUTH WESTERN OFFICIALS CONCERNING
SUCH WORLDLY THINGS AS TRAINS. - WE ARE AFLOAT, AFLOAT IN AN OPEN BOAT.
IT was Mrs. Poppets that woke me up next morning.
She said:
"Do you know that it's nearly nine o'clock, sir?"
"Nine o' what?" I cried, starting up.
"Nine o'clock," she replied, through the keyhole. "I thought
you was a- oversleeping yourselves."
I woke Harris, and told him. He said:
"I thought you wanted to get up at six?"
"So I did," I answered; "why didn't you wake me?"
"How could I wake you, when you didn't wake me?" he
retorted. "Now we shan't get on the water till after twelve. I wonder you
take the trouble to get up at all."
"Um," I replied, "lucky for you that I do. If I hadn't woke
you, you'd have lain there for the whole fortnight."
We snarled at one another in this strain for the next few
minutes, when we were interrupted by a defiant snore from George.
It reminded us, for the first time since our being called,
of his existence.
There he lay - the man who had wanted to know what time he
should wake us - on his back, with his mouth wide open, and his knees stuck
up.
I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of
another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me. It seems to me so
shocking to see the precious hours of a man's life - the priceless moments
that will never come back to him again - being wasted in mere brutish sleep.
There was George, throwing away in hideous sloth the
inestimable gift of time; his valuable life, every second of which he would
have to account for hereafter, passing away from him, unused. He might have
been up stuffing himself with eggs and bacon, irritating the dog, or
flirting with the slavey, instead of sprawling there, sunk in soul-clogging
oblivion.
It was a terrible thought. Harris and I appeared to be
struck by it at the same instant. We determined to save him, and, in this
noble resolve, our own dispute was forgotten. We flew across and slung the
clothes off him, and Harris landed him one with a slipper, and I shouted in
his ear, and he awoke.
"Wasermarrer?" he observed, sitting up.
"Get up, you fat-headed chunk!" roared Harris. "It's quarter
to ten."
"What!" he shrieked, jumping out of bed into the bath; "Who
the thunder put this thing here?"
We told him he must have been a fool not to see the bath.
We finished dressing, and, when it came to the extras, we
remembered that we had packed the tooth-brushes and the brush and comb (that
tooth-brush of mine will be the death of me, I know), and we had to go
downstairs, and fish them out of the bag. And when we had done that George
wanted the shaving tackle. We told him that he would have to go without
shaving that morning, as we weren't going to unpack that bag again for him,
nor for anyone like him.
He said:
"Don't be absurd. How can I go into the City like this?"
It was certainly rather rough on the City, but what cared we
for human suffering? As Harris said, in his common, vulgar way, the City
would have to lump it.
We went downstairs to breakfast. Montmorency had invited two
other dogs to come and see him off, and they were whiling away the time by
fighting on the doorstep. We calmed them with an umbrella, and sat down to
chops and cold beef.
Harris said:
"The great thing is to make a good breakfast," and he
started with a couple of chops, saying that he would take these while they
were hot, as the beef could wait.
George got hold of the paper, and read us out the boating
fatalities, and the weather forecast, which latter prophesied "rain, cold,
wet to fine" (whatever more than usually ghastly thing in weather that may
be), "occasional local thunder-storms, east wind, with general depression
over the Midland Counties (London and Channel). Bar. falling."
I do think that, of all the silly, irritating tomfoolishness
by which we are plagued, this "weather-forecast" fraud is about the most
aggravating. It "forecasts" precisely what happened yesterday or a the day
before, and precisely the opposite of what is going to happen to-day.
I remember a holiday of mine being completely ruined one
late autumn by our paying attention to the weather report of the local
newspaper. "Heavy showers, with thunderstorms, may be expected to-day," it
would say on Monday, and so we would give up our picnic, and stop indoors
all day, waiting for the rain. - And people would pass the house, going off
in wagonettes and coaches as jolly and merry as could be, the sun shining
out, and not a cloud to be seen.
"Ah!" we said, as we stood looking out at them through the
window, "won't they come home soaked!"
And we chuckled to think how wet they were going to get, and
came back and stirred the fire, and got our books, and arranged our
specimens of seaweed and cockle shells. By twelve o'clock, with the sun
pouring into the room, the heat became quite oppressive, and we wondered
when those heavy showers and occasional thunderstorms were going to begin.
"Ah! they'll come in the afternoon, you'll find," we said to
each other.
"Oh, WON'T those people get wet. What a lark!"
At one o'clock, the landlady would come in to ask if we
weren't going out, as it seemed such a lovely day.
"No, no," we replied, with a knowing chuckle, "not we. WE
don't mean to get wet - no, no."
And when the afternoon was nearly gone, and still there was
no sign of rain, we tried to cheer ourselves up with the idea that it would
come down all at once, just as the people had started for home, and were out
of the reach of any shelter, and that they would thus get more drenched than
ever. But not a drop ever fell, and it finished a grand day, and a lovely
night after it.
The next morning we would read that it was going to be a
"warm, fine to set-fair day; much heat;" and we would dress ourselves in
flimsy things, and go out, and, half-an-hour after we had started, it would
commence to rain hard, and a bitterly cold wind would spring up, and both
would keep on steadily for the whole day, and we would come home with colds
and rheumatism all over us, and go to bed.
The weather is a thing that is beyond me altogether. I never
can understand it. The barometer is useless: it is as misleading as the
newspaper forecast.
There was one hanging up in a hotel at Oxford at which I was
staying last spring, and, when I got there, it was pointing to "set fair."
It was simply pouring with rain outside, and had been all day; and I
couldn't quite make matters out. I tapped the barometer, and it jumped up
and pointed to "very dry." The Boots stopped as he was passing, and said he
expected it meant to-morrow. I fancied that maybe it was thinking of the
week before last, but Boots said, No, he thought not.
I tapped it again the next morning, and it went up still
higher, and the rain came down faster than ever. On Wednesday I went and hit
it again, and the pointer went round towards "set fair," "very dry," and
"much heat," until it was stopped by the peg, and couldn't go any further.
It tried its best, but the instrument was built so that it couldn't prophesy
fine weather any harder than it did without breaking itself. It evidently
wanted to go on, and prognosticate drought, and water famine, and sunstroke,
and simooms, and such things, but the peg prevented it, and it had to be
content with pointing to the mere commonplace "very dry."
Meanwhile, the rain came down in a steady torrent, and the
lower part of the town was under water, owing to the river having
overflowed.
Boots said it was evident that we were going to have a
prolonged spell of grand weather SOME TIME, and read out a poem which was
printed over the top of the oracle, about
"Long foretold, long last;
Short notice, soon past."
The fine weather never came that
summer. I expect that machine must have been referring to the following
spring.
Then there are those new style of barometers, the long
straight ones. I never can make head or tail of those. There is one side for
10 a.m. yesterday, and one side for 10 a.m. to-day; but you can't always get
there as early as ten, you know. It rises or falls for rain and fine, with
much or less wind, and one end is "Nly" and the other "Ely" (what's Ely got
to do with it?), and if you tap it, it doesn't tell you anything. And you've
got to correct it to sea-level, and reduce it to Fahrenheit, and even then I
don't know the answer.
But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough
when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.
The prophet we like is the old man who, on the particularly gloomy-looking
morning of some day when we particularly want it to be fine, looks round the
horizon with a particularly knowing eye, and says:
"Oh no, sir, I think it will clear up all right. It will
break all right enough, sir."
"Ah, he knows", we say, as we wish him good-morning, and
start off; "wonderful how these old fellows can tell!"
And we feel an affection for that man which is not at all
lessened by the circumstances of its NOT clearing up, but continuing to rain
steadily all day.
"Ah, well," we feel, "he did his best."
For the man that prophesies us bad weather, on the contrary,
we entertain only bitter and revengeful thoughts.
"Going to clear up, d'ye think?" we shout, cheerily, as we
pass.
"Well, no, sir; I'm afraid it's settled down for the day,"
he replies, shaking his head.
"Stupid old fool!" we mutter, "what's HE know about it?"
And, if his portent proves correct, we come back feeling still more angry
against him, and with a vague notion that, somehow or other, he has had
something to do with it.
It was too bright and sunny on this especial morning for
George's blood- curdling readings about "Bar. falling," "atmospheric
disturbance, passing in an oblique line over Southern Europe," and "pressure
increasing," to very much upset us: and so, finding that he could not make
us wretched, and was only wasting his time, he sneaked the cigarette that I
had carefully rolled up for myself, and went.
Then Harris and I, having finished up the few things left on
the table, carted out our luggage on to the doorstep, and waited for a cab.
There seemed a good deal of luggage, when we put it all
together. There was the Gladstone and the small hand-bag, and the two
hampers, and a large roll of rugs, and some four or five overcoats and
macintoshes, and a few umbrellas, and then there was a melon by itself in a
bag, because it was too bulky to go in anywhere, and a couple of pounds of
grapes in another bag, and a Japanese paper umbrella, and a frying pan,
which, being too long to pack, we had wrapped round with brown paper.
It did look a lot, and Harris and I began to feel rather
ashamed of it, though why we should be, I can't see. No cab came by, but the
street boys did, and got interested in the show, apparently, and stopped.
Biggs's boy was the first to come round. Biggs is our
greengrocer, and his chief talent lies in securing the services of the most
abandoned and unprincipled errand-boys that civilisation has as yet
produced. If anything more than usually villainous in the boy-line crops up
in our neighbourhood, we know that it is Biggs's latest. I was told that, at
the time of the Great Coram Street murder, it was promptly concluded by our
street that Biggs's boy (for that period) was at the bottom of it, and had
he not been able, in reply to the severe cross-examination to which he was
subjected by No. 19, when he called there for orders the morning after the
crime (assisted by No. 21, who happened to be on the step at the time), to
prove a complete ALIBI, it would have gone hard with him. I didn't know
Biggs's boy at that time, but, from what I have seen of them since, I should
not have attached much importance to that ALIBI myself.
Biggs's boy, as I have said, came round the corner. He was
evidently in a great hurry when he first dawned upon the vision, but, on
catching sight of Harris and me, and Montmorency, and the things, he eased
up and stared. Harris and I frowned at him. This might have wounded a more
sensitive nature, but Biggs's boys are not, as a rule, touchy. He came to a
dead stop, a yard from our step, and, leaning up against the railings, and
selecting a straw to chew, fixed us with his eye. He evidently meant to see
this thing out.
In another moment, the grocer's boy passed on the opposite
side of the street. Biggs's boy hailed him:
"Hi! ground floor o' 42's a-moving."
The grocer's boy came across, and took up a position on the
other side of the step. Then the young gentleman from the boot-shop stopped,
and joined Biggs's boy; while the empty-can superintendent from "The Blue
Posts" took up an independent position on the curb.
"They ain't a-going to starve, are they? " said the
gentleman from the boot-shop.
"Ah! you'd want to take a thing or two with YOU," retorted
"The Blue
Posts," "if you was a-going to cross the Atlantic in a small boat."
"They ain't a-going to cross the Atlantic," struck in
Biggs's boy; "they're a-going to find Stanley."
By this time, quite a small crowd had collected, and people
were asking each other what was the matter. One party (the young and giddy
portion of the crowd) held that it was a wedding, and pointed out Harris as
the bridegroom; while the elder and more thoughtful among the populace
inclined to the idea that it was a funeral, and that I was probably the
corpse's brother.
At last, an empty cab turned up (it is a street where, as a
rule, and when they are not wanted, empty cabs pass at the rate of three a
minute, and hang about, and get in your way), and packing ourselves and our
belongings into it, and shooting out a couple of Montmorency's friends, who
had evidently sworn never to forsake him, we drove away amidst the cheers of
the crowd, Biggs's boy shying a carrot after us for luck.
We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked where the
eleven-five started from. Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterloo ever
does know where a train is going to start from, or where a train when it
does start is going to, or anything about it. The porter who took our things
thought it would go from number two platform, while another porter, with
whom he discussed the question, had heard a rumour that it would go from
number one. The station-master, on the other hand, was convinced it would
start from the local.
To put an end to the matter, we went upstairs, and asked the
traffic superintendent, and he told us that he had just met a man, who said
he had seen it at number three platform. We went to number three platform,
but the authorities there said that they rather thought that train was the
Southampton express, or else the Windsor loop. But they were sure it wasn't
the Kingston train, though why they were sure it wasn't they couldn't say.
Then our porter said he thought that must be it on the
high-level platform; said he thought he knew the train. So we went to the
high- level platform, and saw the engine-driver, and asked him if he was
going to Kingston. He said he couldn't say for certain of course, but that
he rather thought he was. Anyhow, if he wasn't the 11.5 for Kingston, he
said he was pretty confident he was the 9.32 for Virginia Water, or the 10
a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, or somewhere in that direction, and we
should all know when we got there. We slipped half-a-crown into his hand,
and begged him to be the 11.5 for Kingston.
"Nobody will ever know, on this line," we said, "what you
are, or where you're going. You know the way, you slip off quietly and go to
Kingston."
"Well, I don't know, gents," replied the noble fellow, "but
I suppose SOME train's got to go to Kingston; and I'll do it. Gimme the
half- crown."
Thus we got to Kingston by the London and South-Western
Railway.
We learnt, afterwards, that the train we had come by was
really the Exeter mail, and that they had spent hours at Waterloo, looking
for it, and nobody knew what had become of it.
Our boat was waiting for us at Kingston just below bridge,
and to it we wended our way, and round it we stored our luggage, and into it
we stepped.
"Are you all right, sir?" said the man.
"Right it is," we answered; and with Harris at the sculls
and I at the tiller-lines, and Montmorency, unhappy and deeply suspicious,
in the prow, out we shot on to the waters which, for a fortnight, were to be
our home.
CHAPTER VI.
KINGSTON. - INSTRUCTIVE REMARKS ON
EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. - INSTRUCTIVE OBSERVATIONS ON CARVED OAK AND LIFE IN
GENERAL. - SAD CASE OF STIVVINGS, JUNIOR. - MUSINGS ON ANTIQUITY. - I FORGET
THAT I AM STEERING. - INTERESTING RESULT. - HAMPTON COURT MAZE. - HARRIS AS
A GUIDE.
IT was a glorious morning, late spring or early summer, as
you care to take it, when the dainty sheen of grass and leaf is blushing to
a deeper green; and the year seems like a fair young maid, trembling with
strange, wakening pulses on the brink of womanhood.
The quaint back streets of Kingston, where they came down to
the water's edge, looked quite picturesque in the flashing sunlight, the
glinting river with its drifting barges, the wooded towpath, the trim-kept
villas on the other side, Harris, in a red and orange blazer, grunting away
at the sculls, the distant glimpses of the grey old palace of the Tudors,
all made a sunny picture, so bright but calm, so full of life, and yet so
peaceful, that, early in the day though it was, I felt myself being dreamily
lulled off into a musing fit.
I mused on Kingston, or "Kyningestun," as it was once called
in the days when Saxon "kinges" were crowned there. Great Caesar crossed the
river there, and the Roman legions camped upon its sloping uplands. Caesar,
like, in later years, Elizabeth, seems to have stopped everywhere: only he
was more respectable than good Queen Bess; he didn't put up at the
public-houses.
She was nuts on public-houses, was England's Virgin Queen.
There's scarcely a pub. of any attractions within ten miles of London that
she does not seem to have looked in at, or stopped at, or slept at, some
time or other. I wonder now, supposing Harris, say, turned over a new leaf,
and became a great and good man, and got to be Prime Minister, and died, if
they would put up signs over the public-houses that he had patronised:
"Harris had a glass of bitter in this house;" "Harris had two of Scotch cold
here in the summer of `88;" "Harris was chucked from here in December,
1886."
No, there would be too many of them! It would be the houses
that he had never entered that would become famous. "Only house in South
London that Harris never had a drink in!" The people would flock to it to
see what could have been the matter with it.
How poor weak-minded King Edwy must have hated Kyningestun!
The coronation feast had been too much for him. Maybe boar's head stuffed
with sugar-plums did not agree with him (it wouldn't with me, I know), and
he had had enough of sack and mead; so he slipped from the noisy revel to
steal a quiet moonlight hour with his beloved Elgiva.
Perhaps, from the casement, standing hand-in-hand, they were
watching the calm moonlight on the river, while from the distant halls the
boisterous revelry floated in broken bursts of faint-heard din and tumult.
Then brutal Odo and St. Dunstan force their rude way into
the quiet room, and hurl coarse insults at the sweet-faced Queen, and drag
poor Edwy back to the loud clamour of the drunken brawl.
Years later, to the crash of battle-music, Saxon kings and
Saxon revelry were buried side by side, and Kingston's greatness passed away
for a time, to rise once more when Hampton Court became the palace of the
Tudors and the Stuarts, and the royal barges strained at their moorings on
the river's bank, and bright-cloaked gallants swaggered down the water-steps
to cry: "What Ferry, ho! Gadzooks, gramercy."
Many of the old houses, round about, speak very plainly of
those days when Kingston was a royal borough, and nobles and courtiers lived
there, near their King, and the long road to the palace gates was gay all
day with clanking steel and prancing palfreys, and rustling silks and
velvets, and fair faces. The large and spacious houses, with their oriel,
latticed windows, their huge fireplaces, and their gabled roofs, breathe of
the days of hose and doublet, of pearl-embroidered stomachers, and
complicated oaths. They were upraised in the days "when men knew how to
build." The hard red bricks have only grown more firmly set with time, and
their oak stairs do not creak and grunt when you try to go down them
quietly.
Speaking of oak staircases reminds me that there is a
magnificent carved oak staircase in one of the houses in Kingston. It is a
shop now, in the market-place, but it was evidently once the mansion of some
great personage. A friend of mine, who lives at Kingston, went in there to
buy a hat one day, and, in a thoughtless moment, put his hand in his pocket
and paid for it then and there.
The shopman (he knows my friend) was naturally a little
staggered at first; but, quickly recovering himself, and feeling that
something ought to be done to encourage this sort of thing, asked our hero
if he would like to see some fine old carved oak. My friend said he would,
and the shopman, thereupon, took him through the shop, and up the staircase
of the house. The balusters were a superb piece of workmanship, and the wall
all the way up was oak-panelled, with carving that would have done credit to
a palace.
From the stairs, they went into the drawing-room, which was
a large, bright room, decorated with a somewhat startling though cheerful
paper of a blue ground. There was nothing, however, remarkable about the
apartment, and my friend wondered why he had been brought there. The
proprietor went up to the paper, and tapped it. It gave forth a wooden
sound.
"Oak," he explained. "All carved oak, right up to the
ceiling, just the same as you saw on the staircase."
"But, great Caesar! man," expostulated my friend; "you don't
mean to say you have covered over carved oak with blue wall-paper?"
"Yes," was the reply: "it was expensive work. Had to
match-board it all over first, of course. But the room looks cheerful now.
It was awful gloomy before."
I can't say I altogether blame the man (which is doubtless a
great relief to his mind). From his point of view, which would be that of
the average householder, desiring to take life as lightly as possible, and
not that of the old-curiosity-shop maniac, there is reason on his side.
Carved oak is very pleasant to look at, and to have a little of, but it is
no doubt somewhat depressing to live in, for those whose fancy does not lie
that way. It would be like living in a church.
No, what was sad in his case was that he, who didn't care
for carved oak, should have his drawing-room panelled with it, while people
who do care for it have to pay enormous prices to get it. It seems to be the
rule of this world. Each person has what he doesn't want, and other people
have what he does want.
Married men have wives, and don't seem to want them; and
young single fellows cry out that they can't get them. Poor people who can
hardly keep themselves have eight hearty children. Rich old couples, with no
one to leave their money to, die childless.
Then there are girls with lovers. The girls that have lovers
never want them. They say they would rather be without them, that they
bother them, and why don't they go and make love to Miss Smith and Miss
Brown, who are plain and elderly, and haven't got any lovers? They
themselves don't want lovers. They never mean to marry.
It does not do to dwell on these things; it makes one so
sad.
There was a boy at our school, we used to call him Sandford
and Merton. His real name was Stivvings. He was the most extraordinary lad I
ever came across. I believe he really liked study. He used to get into awful
rows for sitting up in bed and reading Greek; and as for French irregular
verbs there was simply no keeping him away from them. He was full of weird
and unnatural notions about being a credit to his parents and an honour to
the school; and he yearned to win prizes, and grow up and be a clever man,
and had all those sorts of weak-minded ideas. I never knew such a strange
creature, yet harmless, mind you, as the babe unborn.
Well, that boy used to get ill about twice a week, so that
he couldn't go to school. There never was such a boy to get ill as that
Sandford and Merton. If there was any known disease going within ten miles
of him, he had it, and had it badly. He would take bronchitis in the
dog-days, and have hay-fever at Christmas. After a six weeks' period of
drought, he would be stricken down with rheumatic fever; and he would go out
in a November fog and come home with a sunstroke.
They put him under laughing-gas one year, poor lad, and drew
all his teeth, and gave him a false set, because he suffered so terribly
with toothache; and then it turned to neuralgia and ear-ache. He was never
without a cold, except once for nine weeks while he had scarlet fever; and
he always had chilblains. During the great cholera scare of 1871, our
neighbourhood was singularly free from it. There was only one reputed case
in the whole parish: that case was young Stivvings.
He had to stop in bed when he was ill, and eat chicken and
custards and hot-house grapes; and he would lie there and sob, because they
wouldn't let him do Latin exercises, and took his German grammar away from
him.
And we other boys, who would have sacrificed ten terms of
our school-life for the sake of being ill for a day, and had no desire
whatever to give our parents any excuse for being stuck-up about us,
couldn't catch so much as a stiff neck. We fooled about in draughts, and it
did us good, and freshened us up; and we took things to make us sick, and
they made us fat, and gave us an appetite. Nothing we could think of seemed
to make us ill until the holidays began. Then, on the breaking-up day, we
caught colds, and whooping cough, and all kinds of disorders, which lasted
till the term recommenced; when, in spite of everything we could manoeuvre
to the contrary, we would get suddenly well again, and be better than ever.
Such is life; and we are but as grass that is cut down, and
put into the oven and baked.
To go back to the carved-oak question, they must have had
very fair notions of the artistic and the beautiful, our
great-great-grandfathers. Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the
dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is
real intrinsic beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers
that we prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them
that gives them their charms in our eyes. The "old blue" that we hang about
our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a few
centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses that we
hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they
understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the
eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried.
Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures
of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our
willow- pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great
in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the
beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now
break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood
upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house?
That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished
lodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is a delicate red, with
spots. Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to
verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered as a work of art,
I may say it irritates me. Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even my
landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by the
circumstance that her aunt gave it to her.
But in 200 years' time it is more than probable that that
dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its
tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And
people will pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the
wonderful depth of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful
the bit of the tail that is lost no doubt was.
We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are
too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed
by their loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that
china dog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs will
have become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and say
how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as "those grand old
artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those china
dogs."
The "sampler" that the eldest daughter did at school will be
spoken of as "tapestry of the Victorian era," and be almost priceless. The
blue-and- white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all
cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will
use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the
"Presents from Ramsgate," and "Souvenirs of Margate," that may have escaped
destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English curios.
At this point Harris threw away the sculls, got up and left
his seat, and sat on his back, and stuck his legs in the air. Montmorency
howled, and turned a somersault, and the top hamper jumped up, and all the
things came out.
I was somewhat surprised, but I did not lose my temper. I
said, pleasantly enough:
"Hulloa! what's that for?"
"What's that for? Why - "
No, on second thoughts, I will not repeat what Harris said.
I may have been to blame, I admit it; but nothing excuses violence of
language and coarseness of expression, especially in a man who has been
carefully brought up, as I know Harris has been. I was thinking of other
things, and forgot, as any one might easily understand, that I was steering,
and the consequence was that we had got mixed up a good deal with the tow-
path. It was difficult to say, for the moment, which was us and which was
the Middlesex bank of the river; but we found out after a while, and
separated ourselves.
Harris, however, said he had done enough for a bit, and
proposed that I should take a turn; so, as we were in, I got out and took
the tow-line, and ran the boat on past Hampton Court. What a dear old wall
that is that runs along by the river there! I never pass it without feeling
better for the sight of it. Such a mellow, bright, sweet old wall; what a
charming picture it would make, with the lichen creeping here, and the moss
growing there, a shy young vine peeping over the top at this spot, to see
what is going on upon the busy river, and the sober old ivy clustering a
little farther down! There are fifty shades and tints and hues in every ten
yards of that old wall. If I could only draw, and knew how to paint, I could
make a lovely sketch of that old wall, I'm sure. I've often thought I should
like to live at Hampton Court. It looks so peaceful and so quiet, and it is
such a dear old place to ramble round in the early morning before many
people are about.
But, there, I don't suppose I should really care for it when
it came to actual practice. It would be so ghastly dull and depressing in
the evening, when your lamp cast uncanny shadows on the panelled walls, and
the echo of distant feet rang through the cold stone corridors, and now drew
nearer, and now died away, and all was death-like silence, save the beating
of one's own heart.
We are creatures of the sun, we men and women. We love light
and life. That is why we crowd into the towns and cities, and the country
grows more and more deserted every year. In the sunlight - in the daytime,
when Nature is alive and busy all around us, we like the open hill-sides and
the deep woods well enough: but in the night, when our Mother Earth has gone
to sleep, and left us waking, oh! the world seems so lonesome, and we get
frightened, like children in a silent house. Then we sit and sob, and long
for the gas-lit streets, and the sound of human voices, and the answering
throb of human life. We feel so helpless and so little in the great
stillness, when the dark trees rustle in the night-wind. There are so many
ghosts about, and their silent sighs make us feel so sad. Let us gather
together in the great cities, and light huge bonfires of a million gas-jets,
and shout and sing together, and feel brave.
Harris asked me if I'd ever been in the maze at Hampton
Court. He said he went in once to show somebody else the way. He had studied
it up in a map, and it was so simple that it seemed foolish - hardly worth
the twopence charged for admission. Harris said he thought that map must
have been got up as a practical joke, because it wasn't a bit like the real
thing, and only misleading. It was a country cousin that Harris took in. He
said:
"We'll just go in here, so that you can say you've been, but
it's very simple. It's absurd to call it a maze. You keep on taking the
first turning to the right. We'll just walk round for ten minutes, and then
go and get some lunch."
They met some people soon after they had got inside, who
said they had been there for three-quarters of an hour, and had had about
enough of it. Harris told them they could follow him, if they liked; he was
just going in, and then should turn round and come out again. They said it
was very kind of him, and fell behind, and followed.
They picked up various other people who wanted to get it
over, as they went along, until they had absorbed all the persons in the
maze. People who had given up all hopes of ever getting either in or out, or
of ever seeing their home and friends again, plucked up courage at the sight
of Harris and his party, and joined the procession, blessing him. Harris
said he should judge there must have been twenty people, following him, in
all; and one woman with a baby, who had been there all the morning, insisted
on taking his arm, for fear of losing him.
Harris kept on turning to the right, but it seemed a long
way, and his cousin said he supposed it was a very big maze.
"Oh, one of the largest in Europe," said Harris.
"Yes, it must be," replied the cousin, "because we've walked
a good two miles already."
Harris began to think it rather strange himself, but he held
on until, at last, they passed the half of a penny bun on the ground that
Harris's cousin swore he had noticed there seven minutes ago. Harris said:
"Oh, impossible!" but the woman with the baby said, "Not at all," as she
herself had taken it from the child, and thrown it down there, just before
she met Harris. She also added that she wished she never had met Harris, and
expressed an opinion that he was an impostor. That made Harris mad, and he
produced his map, and explained his theory.
"The map may be all right enough," said one of the party,
"if you know whereabouts in it we are now."
Harris didn't know, and suggested that the best thing to do
would be to go back to the entrance, and begin again. For the beginning
again part of it there was not much enthusiasm; but with regard to the
advisability of going back to the entrance there was complete unanimity, and
so they turned, and trailed after Harris again, in the opposite direction.
About ten minutes more passed, and then they found themselves in the centre.
Harris thought at first of pretending that that was what he
had been aiming at; but the crowd looked dangerous, and he decided to treat
it as an accident.
Anyhow, they had got something to start from then. They did
know where they were, and the map was once more consulted, and the thing
seemed simpler than ever, and off they started for the third time.
And three minutes later they were back in the centre again.
After that, they simply couldn't get anywhere else. Whatever
way they turned brought them back to the middle. It became so regular at
length, that some of the people stopped there, and waited for the others to
take a walk round, and come back to them. Harris drew out his map again,
after a while, but the sight of it only infuriated the mob, and they told
him to go and curl his hair with it. Harris said that he couldn't help
feeling that, to a certain extent, he had become unpopular.
They all got crazy at last, and sang out for the keeper, and
the man came and climbed up the ladder outside, and shouted out directions
to them. But all their heads were, by this time, in such a confused whirl
that they were incapable of grasping anything, and so the man told them to
stop where they were, and he would come to them. They huddled together, and
waited; and he climbed down, and came in.
He was a young keeper, as luck would have it, and new to the
business; and when he got in, he couldn't find them, and he wandered about,
trying to get to them, and then HE got lost. They caught sight of him, every
now and then, rushing about the other side of the hedge, and he would see
them, and rush to get to them, and they would wait there for about five
minutes, and then he would reappear again in exactly the same spot, and ask
them where they had been.
They had to wait till one of the old keepers came back from
his dinner before they got out.
Harris said he thought it was a very fine maze, so far as he
was a judge; and we agreed that we would try to get George to go into it, on
our way back.
CHAPTER VII.
THE RIVER IN ITS SUNDAY GARB. -
DRESS ON THE RIVER. - A CHANCE FOR THE MEN. - ABSENCE OF TASTE IN HARRIS. -
GEORGE'S BLAZER. - A DAY WITH THE FASHION-PLATE YOUNG LADY. - MRS. THOMAS'S
TOMB. - THE MAN WHO LOVES NOT GRAVES AND COFFINS AND SKULLS. - HARRIS MAD. -
HIS VIEWS ON GEORGE AND BANKS AND LEMONADE. - HE PERFORMS TRICKS.
IT was while passing through Moulsey Lock that Harris told
me about his maze experience. It took us some time to pass through, as we
were the only boat, and it is a big lock. I don't think I ever remember to
have seen Moulsey Lock, before, with only one boat in it. It is, I suppose,
Boulter's not even excepted, the busiest lock on the river.
I have stood and watched it, sometimes, when you could not
see any water at all, but only a brilliant tangle of bright blazers, and gay
caps, and saucy hats, and many-coloured parasols, and silken rugs, and
cloaks, and streaming ribbons, and dainty whites; when looking down into the
lock from the quay, you might fancy it was a huge box into which flowers of
every hue and shade had been thrown pell-mell, and lay piled up in a rainbow
heap, that covered every corner.
On a fine Sunday it presents this appearance nearly all day
long, while, up the stream, and down the stream, lie, waiting their turn,
outside the gates, long lines of still more boats; and boats are drawing
near and passing away, so that the sunny river, from the Palace up to
Hampton Church, is dotted and decked with yellow, and blue, and orange, and
white, and red, and pink. All the inhabitants of Hampton and Moulsey dress
themselves up in boating costume, and come and mouch round the lock with
their dogs, and flirt, and smoke, and watch the boats; and, altogether, what
with the caps and jackets of the men, the pretty coloured dresses of the
women, the excited dogs, the moving boats, the white sails, the pleasant
landscape, and the sparkling water, it is one of the gayest sights I know of
near this dull old London town.
The river affords a good opportunity for dress. For once in
a way, we men are able to show our taste in colours, and I think we come out
very natty, if you ask me. I always like a little red in my things - red and
black. You know my hair is a sort of golden brown, rather a pretty shade
I've been told, and a dark red matches it beautifully; and then I always
think a light-blue necktie goes so well with it, and a pair of those
Russian-leather shoes and a red silk handkerchief round the waist - a
handkerchief looks so much better than a belt.
Harris always keeps to shades or mixtures of orange or
yellow, but I don't think he is at all wise in this. His complexion is too
dark for yellows. Yellows don't suit him: there can be no question about it.
I want him to take to blue as a background, with white or cream for relief;
but, there! the less taste a person has in dress, the more obstinate he
always seems to be. It is a great pity, because he will never be a success
as it is, while there are one or two colours in which he might not really
look so bad, with his hat on.
George has bought some new things for this trip, and I'm
rather vexed about them. The blazer is loud. I should not like George to
know that I thought so, but there really is no other word for it. He brought
it home and showed it to us on Thursday evening. We asked him what colour he
called it, and he said he didn't know. He didn't think there was a name for
the colour. The man had told him it was an Oriental design. George put it
on, and asked us what we thought of it. Harris said that, as an object to
hang over a flower-bed in early spring to frighten the birds away, he should
respect it; but that, considered as an article of dress for any human being,
except a Margate nigger, it made him ill. George got quite huffy; but, as
Harris said, if he didn't want his opinion, why did he ask for it?
What troubles Harris and myself, with regard to it, is that
we are afraid it will attract attention to the boat.
Girls, also, don't look half bad in a boat, if prettily
dressed. Nothing is more fetching, to my thinking, than a tasteful boating
costume. But a "boating costume," it would be as well if all ladies would
understand, ought to be a costume that can be worn in a boat, and not merely
under a glass-case. It utterly spoils an excursion if you have folk in the
boat who are thinking all the time a good deal more of their dress than of
the trip. It was my misfortune once to go for a water picnic with two ladies
of this kind. We did have a lively time!
They were both beautifully got up - all lace and silky
stuff, and flowers, and ribbons, and dainty shoes, and light gloves. But
they were dressed for a photographic studio, not for a river picnic. They
were the "boating costumes" of a French fashion-plate. It was ridiculous,
fooling about in them anywhere near real earth, air, and water.
The first thing was that they thought the boat was not
clean. We dusted all the seats for them, and then assured them that it was,
but they didn't believe us. One of them rubbed the cushion with the
forefinger of her glove, and showed the result to the other, and they both
sighed, and sat down, with the air of early Christian martyrs trying to make
themselves comfortable up against the stake. You are liable to occasionally
splash a little when sculling, and it appeared that a drop of water ruined
those costumes. The mark never came out, and a stain was left on the dress
for ever.
I was stroke. I did my best. I feathered some two feet high,
and I paused at the end of each stroke to let the blades drip before
returning them, and I picked out a smooth bit of water to drop them into
again each time. (Bow said, after a while, that he did not feel himself a
sufficiently accomplished oarsman to pull with me, but that he would sit
still, if I would allow him, and study my stroke. He said it interested
him.) But, notwithstanding all this, and try as I would, I could not help an
occasional flicker of water from going over those dresses.
The girls did not complain, but they huddled up close
together, and set their lips firm, and every time a drop touched them, they
visibly shrank and shuddered. It was a noble sight to see them suffering
thus in silence, but it unnerved me altogether. I am too sensitive. I got
wild and fitful in my rowing, and splashed more and more, the harder I tried
not to.
I gave it up at last; I said I'd row bow. Bow thought the
arrangement would be better too, and we changed places. The ladies gave an
involuntary sigh of relief when they saw me go, and quite brightened up for
a moment. Poor girls! they had better have put up with me. The man they had
got now was a jolly, light-hearted, thick-headed sort of a chap, with about
as much sensitiveness in him as there might be in a Newfoundland puppy. You
might look daggers at him for an hour and he would not notice it, and it
would not trouble him if he did. He set a good, rollicking, dashing stroke
that sent the spray playing all over the boat like a fountain, and made the
whole crowd sit up straight in no time. When he spread more than pint of
water over one of those dresses, he would give a pleasant little laugh, and
say:
"I beg your pardon, I'm sure;" and offer them his
handkerchief to wipe it off with.
"Oh, it's of no consequence," the poor girls would murmur in
reply, and covertly draw rugs and coats over themselves, and try and protect
themselves with their lace parasols.
At lunch they had a very bad time of it. People wanted them
to sit on the grass, and the grass was dusty; and the tree-trunks, against
which they were invited to lean, did not appear to have been brushed for
weeks; so they spread their handkerchiefs on the ground and sat on those,
bolt upright. Somebody, in walking about with a plate of beef-steak pie,
tripped up over a root, and sent the pie flying. None of it went over them,
fortunately, but the accident suggested a fresh danger to them, and agitated
them; and, whenever anybody moved about, after that, with anything in his
hand that could fall and make a mess, they watched that person with growing
anxiety until he sat down again.
"Now then, you girls," said our friend Bow to them,
cheerily, after it was all over, "come along, you've got to wash up!"
They didn't understand him at first. When they grasped the
idea, they said they feared they did not know how to wash up.
"Oh, I'll soon show you," he cried; "it's rare fun! You lie
down on your - I mean you lean over the bank, you know, and sloush the
things about in the water."
The elder sister said that she was afraid that they hadn't
got on dresses suited to the work.
"Oh, they'll be all right," said he light-heartedly; "tuck
`em up."
And he made them do it, too. He told them that that sort of
thing was half the fun of a picnic. They said it was very interesting.
Now I come to think it over, was that young man as
dense-headed as we thought? or was he - no, impossible! there was such a
simple, child-like expression about him!
Harris wanted to get out at Hampton Church, to go and see
Mrs. Thomas's tomb.
"Who is Mrs. Thomas?" I asked.
"How should I know?" replied Harris. "She's a lady that's
got a funny tomb, and I want to see it."
I objected. I don't know whether it is that I am built
wrong, but I never did seem to hanker after tombstones myself. I know that
the proper thing to do, when you get to a village or town, is to rush off to
the churchyard, and enjoy the graves; but it is a recreation that I always
deny myself. I take no interest in creeping round dim and chilly churches
behind wheezy old men, and reading epitaphs. Not even the sight of a bit of
cracked brass let into a stone affords me what I call real happiness.
I shock respectable sextons by the imperturbability I am
able to assume before exciting inscriptions, and by my lack of enthusiasm
for the local family history, while my ill-concealed anxiety to get outside
wounds their feelings.
One golden morning of a sunny day, I leant against the low
stone wall that guarded a little village church, and I smoked, and drank in
deep, calm gladness from the sweet, restful scene - the grey old church with
its clustering ivy and its quaint carved wooden porch, the white lane
winding down the hill between tall rows of elms, the thatched-roof cottages
peeping above their trim-kept hedges, the silver river in the hollow, the
wooded hills beyond!
It was a lovely landscape. It was idyllic, poetical, and it
inspired me. I felt good and noble. I felt I didn't want to be sinful and
wicked any more. I would come and live here, and never do any more wrong,
and lead a blameless, beautiful life, and have silver hair when I got old,
and all that sort of thing.
In that moment I forgave all my friends and relations for
their wickedness and cussedness, and I blessed them. They did not know that
I blessed them. They went their abandoned way all unconscious of what I, far
away in that peaceful village, was doing for them; but I did it, and I
wished that I could let them know that I had done it, because I wanted to
make them happy. I was going on thinking away all these grand, tender
thoughts, when my reverie was broken in upon by a shrill piping voice crying
out:
"All right, sur, I'm a-coming, I'm a-coming. It's all right,
sur; don't you be in a hurry."
I looked up, and saw an old bald-headed man hobbling across
the churchyard towards me, carrying a huge bunch of keys in his hand that
shook and jingled at every step.
I motioned him away with silent dignity, but he still
advanced, screeching out the while:
"I'm a-coming, sur, I'm a-coming. I'm a little lame. I ain't
as spry as
I used to be. This way, sur."
"Go away, you miserable old man," I said.
"I've come as soon as I could, sur," he replied. "My missis
never see you till just this minute. You follow me, sur."
"Go away," I repeated; "leave me before I get over the wall,
and slay you."
He seemed surprised.
"Don't you want to see the tombs?" he said.
"No," I answered, "I don't. I want to stop here, leaning up
against this gritty old wall. Go away, and don't disturb me. I am chock full
of beautiful and noble thoughts, and I want to stop like it, because it
feels nice and good. Don't you come fooling about, making me mad, chivying
away all my better feelings with this silly tombstone nonsense of yours. Go
away, and get somebody to bury you cheap, and I'll pay half the expense."
He was bewildered for a moment. He rubbed his eyes, and
looked hard at me. I seemed human enough on the outside: he couldn't make it
out.
He said:
"Yuise a stranger in these parts? You don't live here?"
"No," I said, "I don't. YOU wouldn't if I did."
"Well then," he said, "you want to see the tombs - graves -
folks been buried, you know - coffins!"
"You are an untruther," I replied, getting roused; "I do not
want to see tombs - not your tombs. Why should I? We have graves of our own,
our family has. Why my uncle Podger has a tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery,
that is the pride of all that country-side; and my grandfather's vault at
Bow is capable of accommodating eight visitors, while my great-aunt Susan
has a brick grave in Finchley Churchyard, with a headstone with a coffee-
pot sort of thing in bas-relief upon it, and a six-inch best white stone
coping all the way round, that cost pounds. When I want graves, it is to
those places that I go and revel. I do not want other folk's. When you
yourself are buried, I will come and see yours. That is all I can do for
you."
He burst into tears. He said that one of the tombs had a bit
of stone upon the top of it that had been said by some to be probably part
of the remains of the figure of a man, and that another had some words,
carved upon it, that nobody had ever been able to decipher.
I still remained obdurate, and, in broken-hearted tones, he
said:
"Well, won't you come and see the memorial window?"
I would not even see that, so he fired his last shot. He
drew near, and whispered hoarsely:
"I've got a couple of skulls down in the crypt," he said;
"come and see those. Oh, do come and see the skulls! You are a young man out
for a holiday, and you want to enjoy yourself. Come and see the skulls!"
Then I turned and fled, and as I sped I heard him calling to
me:
"Oh, come and see the skulls; come back and see the skulls!"
Harris, however, revels in tombs, and graves, and epitaphs,
and monumental inscriptions, and the thought of not seeing Mrs. Thomas's
grave made him crazy. He said he had looked forward to seeing Mrs. Thomas's
grave from the first moment that the trip was proposed - said he wouldn't
have joined if it hadn't been for the idea of seeing Mrs. Thomas's tomb.
I reminded him of George, and how we had to get the boat up
to Shepperton by five o'clock to meet him, and then he went for George. Why
was George to fool about all day, and leave us to lug this lumbering old
top-heavy barge up and down the river by ourselves to meet him? Why couldn't
George come and do some work? Why couldn't he have got the day off, and come
down with us? Bank be blowed! What good was he at the bank?
"I never see him doing any work there," continued Harris,
"whenever I go in. He sits behind a bit of glass all day, trying to look as
if he was doing something. What's the good of a man behind a bit of glass? I
have to work for my living. Why can't he work. What use is he there, and
what's the good of their banks? They take your money, and then, when you
draw a cheque, they send it back smeared all over with `No effects,' `Refer
to drawer.' What's the good of that? That's the sort of trick they served me
twice last week. I'm not going to stand it much longer. I shall withdraw my
account. If he was here, we could go and see that tomb. I don't believe he's
at the bank at all. He's larking about somewhere, that's what he's doing,
leaving us to do all the work. I'm going to get out, and have a drink."
I pointed out to him that we were miles away from a pub.;
and then he went on about the river, and what was the good of the river, and
was everyone who came on the river to die of thirst?
It is always best to let Harris have his head when he gets
like this.
Then he pumps himself out, and is quiet afterwards.
I reminded him that there was concentrated lemonade in the
hamper, and a gallon-jar of water in the nose of the boat, and that the two
only wanted mixing to make a cool and refreshing beverage.
Then he flew off about lemonade, and "such-like
Sunday-school slops," as he termed them, ginger-beer, raspberry syrup, &c.,
&c. He said they all produced dyspepsia, and ruined body and soul alike, and
were the cause of half the crime in England.
He said he must drink something, however, and climbed upon
the seat, and leant over to get the bottle. It was right at the bottom of
the hamper, and seemed difficult to find, and he had to lean over further
and further, and, in trying to steer at the same time, from a topsy-turvy
point of view, he pulled the wrong line, and sent the boat into the bank,
and the shock upset him, and he dived down right into the hamper, and stood
there on his head, holding on to the sides of the boat like grim death, his
legs sticking up into the air. He dared not move for fear of going over, and
had to stay there till I could get hold of his legs, and haul him back, and
that made him madder than ever.
CHAPTER VIII.
BLACKMAILING. - THE PROPER COURSE
TO PURSUE. - SELFISH BOORISHNESS OF RIVER-SIDE LANDOWNER. - "NOTICE" BOARDS.
- UNCHRISTIANLIKE FEELINGS OF HARRIS. - HOW HARRIS SINGS A COMIC SONG. - A
HIGH-CLASS PARTY. - SHAMEFUL CONDUCT OF TWO ABANDONED YOUNG MEN. - SOME
USELESS INFORMATION. - GEORGE BUYS A BANJO.
WE stopped under the willows by Kempton Park, and lunched.
It is a pretty little spot there: a pleasant grass plateau, running along by
the water's edge, and overhung by willows. We had just commenced the third
course - the bread and jam - when a gentleman in shirt-sleeves and a short
pipe came along, and wanted to know if we knew that we were trespassing. We
said we hadn't given the matter sufficient consideration as yet to enable us
to arrive at a definite conclusion on that point, but that, if he assured us
on his word as a gentleman that we WERE trespassing, we would, without
further hesitation, believe it.
He gave us the required assurance, and we thanked him, but
he still hung about, and seemed to be dissatisfied, so we asked him if there
was anything further that we could do for him; and Harris, who is of a
chummy disposition, offered him a bit of bread and jam.
I fancy he must have belonged to some society sworn to
abstain from bread and jam; for he declined it quite gruffly, as if he were
vexed at being tempted with it, and he added that it was his duty to turn us
off.
Harris said that if it was a duty it ought to be done, and
asked the man what was his idea with regard to the best means for
accomplishing it. Harris is what you would call a well-made man of about
number one size, and looks hard and bony, and the man measured him up and
down, and said he would go and consult his master, and then come back and
chuck us both into the river.
Of course, we never saw him any more, and, of course, all he
really wanted was a shilling. There are a certain number of riverside roughs
who make quite an income, during the summer, by slouching about the banks
and blackmailing weak-minded noodles in this way. They represent themselves
as sent by the proprietor. The proper course to pursue is to offer your name
and address, and leave the owner, if he really has anything to do with the
matter, to summon you, and prove what damage you have done to his land by
sitting down on a bit of it. But the majority of people are so intensely
lazy and timid, that they prefer to encourage the imposition by giving in to
it rather than put an end to it by the exertion of a little firmness.
Where it is really the owners that are to blame, they ought
to be shown up. The selfishness of the riparian proprietor grows with every
year. If these men had their way they would close the river Thames
altogether. They actually do this along the minor tributary streams and in
the backwaters. They drive posts into the bed of the stream, and draw chains
across from bank to bank, and nail huge notice-boards on every tree. The
sight of those notice-boards rouses every evil instinct in my nature. I feel
I want to tear each one down, and hammer it over the head of the man who put
it up, until I have killed him, and then I would bury him, and put the board
up over the grave as a tombstone.
I mentioned these feelings of mine to Harris, and he said he
had them worse than that. He said he not only felt he wanted to kill the man
who caused the board to be put up, but that he should like to slaughter the
whole of his family and all his friends and relations, and then burn down
his house. This seemed to me to be going too far, and I said so to Harris;
but he answered:
"Not a bit of it. Serve `em all jolly well right, and I'd go
and sing comic songs on the ruins."
I was vexed to hear Harris go on in this blood-thirsty
strain. We never ought to allow our instincts of justice to degenerate into
mere vindictiveness. It was a long while before I could get Harris to take a
more Christian view of the subject, but I succeeded at last, and he promised
me that he would spare the friends and relations at all events, and would
not sing comic songs on the ruins.
You have never heard Harris sing a comic song, or you would
understand the service I had rendered to mankind. It is one of Harris's
fixed ideas that he CAN sing a comic song; the fixed idea, on the contrary,
among those of Harris's friends who have heard him try, is that he CAN'T and
never will be able to, and that he ought not to be allowed to try.
When Harris is at a party, and is asked to sing, he replies:
"Well, I can only sing a COMIC song, you know;" and he says it in a tone
that implies that his singing of THAT, however, is a thing that you ought to
hear once, and then die.
"Oh, that IS nice," says the hostess. "Do sing one, Mr.
Harris;" and Harris gets up, and makes for the piano, with the beaming
cheeriness of a generous-minded man who is just about to give somebody
something.
"Now, silence, please, everybody" says the hostess, turning
round; "Mr.
Harris is going to sing a comic song!"
"Oh, how jolly!" they murmur; and they hurry in from the
conservatory, and come up from the stairs, and go and fetch each other from
all over the house, and crowd into the drawing-room, and sit round, all
smirking in anticipation.
Then Harris begins.
Well, you don't look for much of a voice in a comic song.
You don't expect correct phrasing or vocalization. You don't mind if a man
does find out, when in the middle of a note, that he is too high, and comes
down with a jerk. You don't bother about time. You don't mind a man being
two bars in front of the accompaniment, and easing up in the middle of a
line to argue it out with the pianist, and then starting the verse afresh.
But you do expect the words.
You don't expect a man to never remember more than the first
three lines of the first verse, and to keep on repeating these until it is
time to begin the chorus. You don't expect a man to break off in the middle
of a line, and snigger, and say, it's very funny, but he's blest if he can
think of the rest of it, and then try and make it up for himself, and,
afterwards, suddenly recollect it, when he has got to an entirely different
part of the song, and break off, without a word of warning, to go back and
let you have it then and there. You don't - well, I will just give you an
idea of Harris's comic singing, and then you can judge of it for yourself.
HARRIS (STANDING UP IN FRONT OF PIANO AND ADDRESSING THE
EXPECTANT MOB): "I'm afraid it's a very old thing, you know. I expect you
all know it, you know. But it's the only thing I know. It's the Judge's song
out of PINAFORE - no, I don't mean PINAFORE - I mean - you know what I mean
- the other thing, you know. You must all join in the chorus, you know."
[Murmurs of delight and anxiety to join in the chorus.
Brilliant performance of prelude to the Judge's song in "Trial by Jury" by
nervous Pianist. Moment arrives for Harris to join in. Harris takes no
notice of it. Nervous pianist commences prelude over again, and Harris,
commencing singing at the same time, dashes off the first two lines of the
First Lord's song out of "Pinafore." Nervous pianist tries to push on with
prelude, gives it up, and tries to follow Harris with accompaniment to
Judge's song out "Trial by Jury," finds that doesn't answer, and tries to
recollect what he is doing, and where he is, feels his mind giving way, and
stops short.]
HARRIS (WITH KINDLY ENCOURAGEMENT): "It's all right. You're
doing it very well, indeed - go on."
NERVOUS PIANIST: "I'm afraid there's a mistake somewhere.
What are you singing?"
HARRIS (PROMPTLY): "Why the Judge's song out of Trial by
Jury. Don't you know it?"
SOME FRIEND OF HARRIS'S (FROM THE BACK OF THE ROOM): "No,
you're not, you chuckle-head, you're singing the Admiral's song from
PINAFORE."
[Long argument between Harris and Harris's friend as to what
Harris is really singing. Friend finally suggests that it doesn't matter
what Harris is singing so long as Harris gets on and sings it, and Harris,
with an evident sense of injustice rankling inside him, requests pianist to
begin again. Pianist, thereupon, starts prelude to the Admiral's song, and
Harris, seizing what he considers to be a favourable opening in the music,
begins.]
HARRIS:
" `When I was young and called to the Bar.' "
[GENERAL ROAR OF LAUGHTER, TAKEN BY HARRIS AS A COMPLIMENT.
PIANIST, THINKING OF HIS WIFE AND FAMILY, GIVES UP THE UNEQUAL CONTEST AND
RETIRES; HIS PLACE BEING TAKEN BY A STRONGER-NERVED MAN.
THE NEW PIANIST (CHEERILY): "Now then, old man, you start
off, and I'll follow. We won't bother about any prelude."
HARRIS (UPON WHOM THE EXPLANATION OF MATTERS HAS SLOWLY
DAWNED - LAUGHING): "By Jove! I beg your pardon. Of course - I've been
mixing up the two songs. It was Jenkins confused me, you know. Now then.
[SINGING; HIS VOICE APPEARING TO COME FROM THE CELLAR, AND
SUGGESTING THE FIRST LOW WARNINGS OF AN APPROACHING EARTHQUAKE.
" `When I was young I served a term
As office-boy to an attorney's firm.'
(Aside to pianist): "It is too low, old man; we'll have that
over again, if you don't mind."
[SINGS FIRST TWO LINES OVER AGAIN, IN A HIGH FALSETTO THIS
TIME. GREAT SURPRISE ON THE PART OF THE AUDIENCE. NERVOUS OLD LADY NEAR THE
FIRE BEGINS TO CRY, AND HAS TO BE LED OUT.]
HARRIS (continuing):
"I swept the windows and I swept the door,
And I - `
No - no, I cleaned the windows of the big front door. And I
polished up the floor - no, dash it - I beg your pardon - funny thing, I
can't think of that line. And I - and I - Oh, well, we'll get on to the
chorus, and chance it (SINGS):
`And I diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-de,
Till now I am the ruler of the Queen's navee.'
Now then, chorus - it is the last two lines repeated, you
know.
GENERAL CHORUS:
"And he diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-dee'd,
Till now he is the ruler of the Queen's navee."
And Harris never sees what an ass he is making of himself,
and how he is annoying a lot of people who never did him any harm. He
honestly imagines that he has given them a treat, and says he will sing
another comic song after supper.
Speaking of comic songs and parties, reminds me of a rather
curious incident at which I once assisted; which, as it throws much light
upon the inner mental working of human nature in general, ought, I think, to
be recorded in these pages.
We were a fashionable and highly cultured party. We had on
our best clothes, and we talked pretty, and were very happy - all except two
young fellows, students, just returned from Germany, commonplace young men,
who seemed restless and uncomfortable, as if they found the proceedings
slow. The truth was, we were too clever for them. Our brilliant but polished
conversation, and our high-class tastes, were beyond them. They were out of
place, among us. They never ought to have been there at all. Everybody
agreed upon that, later on.
We played MORCEAUX from the old German masters. We discussed
philosophy and ethics. We flirted with graceful dignity. We were even
humorous - in a high-class way.
Somebody recited a French poem after supper, and we said it
was beautiful; and then a lady sang a sentimental ballad in Spanish, and it
made one or two of us weep - it was so pathetic.
And then those two young men got up, and asked us if we had
ever heard Herr Slossenn Boschen (who had just arrived, and was then down in
the supper-room) sing his great German comic song.
None of us had heard it, that we could remember.
The young men said it was the funniest song that had ever
been written, and that, if we liked, they would get Herr Slossenn Boschen,
whom they knew very well, to sing it. They said it was so funny that, when
Herr Slossenn Boschen had sung it once before the German Emperor, he (the
German Emperor) had had to be carried off to bed.
They said nobody could sing it like Herr Slossenn Boschen;
he was so intensely serious all through it that you might fancy he was
reciting a tragedy, and that, of course, made it all the funnier. They said
he never once suggested by his tone or manner that he was singing anything
funny - that would spoil it. It was his air of seriousness, almost of
pathos, that made it so irresistibly amusing.
We said we yearned to hear it, that we wanted a good laugh;
and they went downstairs, and fetched Herr Slossenn Boschen.
He appeared to be quite pleased to sing it, for he came up
at once, and sat down to the piano without another word.
"Oh, it will amuse you. You will laugh," whispered the two
young men, as they passed through the room, and took up an unobtrusive
position behind the Professor's back.
Herr Slossenn Boschen accompanied himself. The prelude did
not suggest a comic song exactly. It was a weird, soulful air. It quite made
one's flesh creep; but we murmured to one another that it was the German
method, and prepared to enjoy it.
I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school,
but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much
better ever since. Still, I did not want the people there to guess my
ignorance; so I hit upon what I thought to be rather a good idea. I kept my
eye on the two young students, and followed them. When they tittered, I
tittered; when they roared, I roared; and I also threw in a little snigger
all by myself now and then, as if I had seen a bit of humour that had
escaped the others. I considered this particularly artful on my part.
I noticed, as the song progressed, that a good many other
people seemed to have their eye fixed on the two young men, as well as
myself. These other people also tittered when the young men tittered, and
roared when the young men roared; and, as the two young men tittered and
roared and exploded with laughter pretty continuously all through the song,
it went exceedingly well.
And yet that German Professor did not seem happy. At first,
when we began to laugh, the expression of his face was one of intense
surprise, as if laughter were the very last thing he had expected to be
greeted with. We thought this very funny: we said his earnest manner was
half the humour. The slightest hint on his part that he knew how funny he
was would have completely ruined it all. As we continued to laugh, his
surprise gave way to an air of annoyance and indignation, and he scowled
fiercely round upon us all (except upon the two young men who, being behind
him, he could not see). That sent us into convulsions. We told each other
that it would be the death of us, this thing. The words alone, we said, were
enough to send us into fits, but added to his mock seriousness - oh, it was
too much!
In the last verse, he surpassed himself. He glowered round
upon us with a look of such concentrated ferocity that, but for our being
forewarned as to the German method of comic singing, we should have been
nervous; and he threw such a wailing note of agony into the weird music
that, if we had not known it was a funny song, we might have wept.
He finished amid a perfect shriek of laughter. We said it
was the funniest thing we had ever heard in all our lives. We said how
strange it was that, in the face of things like these, there should be a
popular notion that the Germans hadn't any sense of humour. And we asked the
Professor why he didn't translate the song into English, so that the common
people could understand it, and hear what a real comic song was like.
Then Herr Slossenn Boschen got up, and went on awful. He
swore at us in
German (which I should judge to be a singularly effective language for
that purpose), and he danced, and shook his fists, and called us all the
English he knew. He said he had never been so insulted in all his life.
It appeared that the song was not a comic song at all. It
was about a young girl who lived in the Hartz Mountains, and who had given
up her life to save her lover's soul; and he died, and met her spirit in the
air; and then, in the last verse, he jilted her spirit, and went on with
another spirit - I'm not quite sure of the details, but it was something
very sad, I know. Herr Boschen said he had sung it once before the German
Emperor, and he (the German Emperor) had sobbed like a little child. He
(Herr Boschen) said it was generally acknowledged to be one of the most
tragic and pathetic songs in the German language.
It was a trying situation for us - very trying. There seemed
to be no answer. We looked around for the two young men who had done this
thing, but they had left the house in an unostentatious manner immediately
after the end of the song.
That was the end of that party. I never saw a party break up
so quietly, and with so little fuss. We never said good-night even to one
another. We came downstairs one at a time, walking softly, and keeping the
shady side. We asked the servant for our hats and coats in whispers, and
opened the door for ourselves, and slipped out, and got round the corner
quickly, avoiding each other as much as possible.
I have never taken much interest in German songs since then.
We reached Sunbury Lock at half-past three. The river is
sweetly pretty just there before you come to the gates, and the backwater is
charming; but don't attempt to row up it.
I tried to do so once. I was sculling, and asked the fellows
who were steering if they thought it could be done, and they said, oh, yes,
they thought so, if I pulled hard. We were just under the little foot-bridge
that crosses it between the two weirs, when they said this, and I bent down
over the sculls, and set myself up, and pulled.
I pulled splendidly. I got well into a steady rhythmical
swing. I put my arms, and my legs, and my back into it. I set myself a good,
quick, dashing stroke, and worked in really grand style. My two friends said
it was a pleasure to watch me. At the end of five minutes, I thought we
ought to be pretty near the weir, and I looked up. We were under the bridge,
in exactly the same spot that we were when I began, and there were those two
idiots, injuring themselves by violent laughing. I had been grinding away
like mad to keep that boat stuck still under that bridge. I let other people
pull up backwaters against strong streams now.
We sculled up to Walton, a rather large place for a
riverside town. As with all riverside places, only the tiniest corner of it
comes down to the water, so that from the boat you might fancy it was a
village of some half-dozen houses, all told. Windsor and Abingdon are the
only towns between London and Oxford that you can really see anything of
from the stream. All the others hide round corners, and merely peep at the
river down one street: my thanks to them for being so considerate, and
leaving the river-banks to woods and fields and water-works.
Even Reading, though it does its best to spoil and sully and
make hideous as much of the river as it can reach, is good-natured enough to
keep its ugly face a good deal out of sight.
Caesar, of course, had a little place at Walton - a camp, or
an entrenchment, or something of that sort. Caesar was a regular up-river
man. Also Queen Elizabeth, she was there, too. You can never get away from
that woman, go where you will. Cromwell and Bradshaw (not the guide man, but
the King Charles's head man) likewise sojourned here. They must have been
quite a pleasant little party, altogether.
There is an iron "scold's bridle" in Walton Church. They
used these things in ancient days for curbing women's tongues. They have
given up the attempt now. I suppose iron was getting scarce, and nothing
else would be strong enough.
There are also tombs of note in the church, and I was afraid
I should never get Harris past them; but he didn't seem to think of them,
and we went on. Above the bridge the river winds tremendously. This makes it
look picturesque; but it irritates you from a towing or sculling point of
view, and causes argument between the man who is pulling and the man who is
steering.
You pass Oatlands Park on the right bank here. It is a
famous old place. Henry VIII. stole it from some one or the other, I forget
whom now, and lived in it. There is a grotto in the park which you can see
for a fee, and which is supposed to be very wonderful; but I cannot see much
in it myself. The late Duchess of York, who lived at Oatlands, was very fond
of dogs, and kept an immense number. She had a special graveyard made, in
which to bury them when they died, and there they lie, about fifty of them,
with a tombstone over each, and an epitaph inscribed thereon.
Well, I dare say they deserve it quite as much as the
average Christian does.
At "Corway Stakes" - the first bend above Walton Bridge -
was fought a battle between Caesar and Cassivelaunus. Cassivelaunus had
prepared the river for Caesar, by planting it full of stakes (and had, no
doubt, put up a notice-board). But Caesar crossed in spite of this. You
couldn't choke Caesar off that river. He is the sort of man we want round
the backwaters now.
Halliford and Shepperton are both pretty little spots where
they touch the river; but there is nothing remarkable about either of them.
There is a tomb in Shepperton churchyard, however, with a poem on it, and I
was nervous lest Harris should want to get out and fool round it. I saw him
fix a longing eye on the landing-stage as we drew near it, so I managed, by
an adroit movement, to jerk his cap into the water, and in the excitement of
recovering that, and his indignation at my clumsiness, he forgot all about
his beloved graves.
At Weybridge, the Wey (a pretty little stream, navigable for
small boats up to Guildford, and one which I have always been making up my
mind to explore, and never have), the Bourne, and the Basingstoke Canal all
enter the Thames together. The lock is just opposite the town, and the first
thing that we saw, when we came in view of it, was George's blazer on one of
the lock gates, closer inspection showing that George was inside it.
Montmorency set up a furious barking, I shrieked, Harris
roared; George waved his hat, and yelled back. The lock-keeper rushed out
with a drag, under the impression that somebody had fallen into the lock,
and appeared annoyed at finding that no one had.
George had rather a curious oilskin-covered parcel in his
hand. It was round and flat at one end, with a long straight handle sticking
out of it.
"What's that?" said Harris - "a frying-pan?"
"No," said George, with a strange, wild look glittering in
his eyes; "they are all the rage this season; everybody has got them up the
river. It's a banjo."
"I never knew you played the banjo!" cried Harris and I, in
one breath.
"Not exactly," replied George: "but it's very easy, they
tell me; and
I've got the instruction book!"
CHAPTER IX.
GEORGE IS INTRODUCED TO WORK. -
HEATHENISH INSTINCTS OF TOW-LINES. - UNGRATEFUL CONDUCT OF A DOUBLE-SCULLING
SKIFF. - TOWERS AND TOWED. - A USE DISCOVERED FOR LOVERS. - STRANGE
DISAPPEARANCE OF AN ELDERLY LADY. - MUCH HASTE, LESS SPEED. - BEING TOWED BY
GIRLS: EXCITING SENSATION. - THE MISSING LOCK OR THE HAUNTED RIVER. - MUSIC.
- SAVED!
WE made George work, now we had got him. He did not want to
work, of course; that goes without saying. He had had a hard time in the
City, so he explained. Harris, who is callous in his nature, and not prone
to pity, said:
"Ah! and now you are going to have a hard time on the river
for a change; change is good for everyone. Out you get!"
He could not in conscience - not even George's conscience -
object, though he did suggest that, perhaps, it would be better for him to
stop in the boat, and get tea ready, while Harris and I towed, because
getting tea was such a worrying work, and Harris and I looked tired. The
only reply we made to this, however, was to pass him over the tow-line, and
he took it, and stepped out.
There is something very strange and unaccountable about a
tow-line. You roll it up with as much patience and care as you would take to
fold up a new pair of trousers, and five minutes afterwards, when you pick
it up, it is one ghastly, soul-revolting tangle.
I do not wish to be insulting, but I firmly believe that if
you took an average tow-line, and stretched it out straight across the
middle of a field, and then turned your back on it for thirty seconds, that,
when you looked round again, you would find that it had got itself
altogether in a heap in the middle of the field, and had twisted itself up,
and tied itself into knots, and lost its two ends, and become all loops; and
it would take you a good half-hour, sitting down there on the grass and
swearing all the while, to disentangle it again.
That is my opinion of tow-lines in general. Of course, there
may be honourable exceptions; I do not say that there are not. There may be
tow-lines that are a credit to their profession - conscientious, respectable
tow-lines - tow-lines that do not imagine they are crochet- work, and try to
knit themselves up into antimacassars the instant they are left to
themselves. I say there MAY be such tow-lines; I sincerely hope there are.
But I have not met with them.
This tow-line I had taken in myself just before we had got
to the lock. I would not let Harris touch it, because he is careless. I had
looped it round slowly and cautiously, and tied it up in the middle, and
folded it in two, and laid it down gently at the bottom of the boat. Harris
had lifted it up scientifically, and had put it into George's hand. George
had taken it firmly, and held it away from him, and had begun to unravel it
as if he were taking the swaddling clothes off a new-born infant; and,
before he had unwound a dozen yards, the thing was more like a badly-made
door-mat than anything else.
It is always the same, and the same sort of thing always
goes on in connection with it. The man on the bank, who is trying to
disentangle it, thinks all the fault lies with the man who rolled it up; and
when a man up the river thinks a thing, he says it.
"What have you been trying to do with it, make a fishing-net
of it? You've made a nice mess you have; why couldn't you wind it up
properly, you silly dummy?" he grunts from time to time as he struggles
wildly with it, and lays it out flat on the tow-path, and runs round and
round it, trying to find the end.
On the other hand, the man who wound it up thinks the whole
cause of the muddle rests with the man who is trying to unwind it.
"It was all right when you took it!" he exclaims
indignantly. "Why don't you think what you are doing? You go about things in
such a slap-dash style. You'd get a scaffolding pole entangled you would!"
And they feel so angry with one another that they would like
to hang each other with the thing.
Ten minutes go by, and the first man gives a yell and goes
mad, and dances on the rope, and tries to pull it straight by seizing hold
of the first piece that comes to his hand and hauling at it. Of course, this
only gets it into a tighter tangle than ever. Then the second man climbs out
of the boat and comes to help him, and they get in each other's way, and
hinder one another. They both get hold of the same bit of line, and pull at
it in opposite directions, and wonder where it is caught. In the end, they
do get it clear, and then turn round and find that the boat has drifted off,
and is making straight for the weir.
This really happened once to my own knowledge. It was up by
Boveney, one rather windy morning. We were pulling down stream, and, as we
came round the bend, we noticed a couple of men on the bank. They were
looking at each other with as bewildered and helplessly miserable expression
as I have ever witnessed on any human countenance before or since, and they
held a long tow-line between them. It was clear that something had happened,
so we eased up and asked them what was the matter.
"Why, our boat's gone off!" they replied in an indignant
tone. "We just got out to disentangle the tow-line, and when we looked
round, it was gone!"
And they seemed hurt at what they evidently regarded as a
mean and ungrateful act on the part of the boat.
We found the truant for them half a mile further down, held
by some rushes, and we brought it back to them. I bet they did not give that
boat another chance for a week.
I shall never forget the picture of those two men walking up
and down the bank with a tow-line, looking for their boat.
One sees a good many funny incidents up the river in
connection with towing. One of the most common is the sight of a couple of
towers, walking briskly along, deep in an animated discussion, while the man
in the boat, a hundred yards behind them, is vainly shrieking to them to
stop, and making frantic signs of distress with a scull. Something has gone
wrong; the rudder has come off, or the boat-hook has slipped overboard, or
his hat has dropped into the water and is floating rapidly down stream.
He calls to them to stop, quite gently and politely at
first.
"Hi! stop a minute, will you?" he shouts cheerily. "I've
dropped my hat over-board."
Then: "Hi! Tom - Dick! can't you hear?" not quite so affably
this time.
Then: "Hi! Confound YOU, you dunder-headed idiots! Hi! stop!
Oh you - !"
After that he springs up, and dances about, and roars
himself red in the face, and curses everything he knows. And the small boys
on the bank stop and jeer at him, and pitch stones at him as he is pulled
along past them, at the rate of four miles an hour, and can't get out.
Much of this sort of trouble would be saved if those who are
towing would keep remembering that they are towing, and give a pretty
frequent look round to see how their man is getting on. It is best to let
one person tow. When two are doing it, they get chattering, and forget, and
the boat itself, offering, as it does, but little resistance, is of no real
service in reminding them of the fact.
As an example of how utterly oblivious a pair of towers can
be to their work, George told us, later on in the evening, when we were
discussing the subject after supper, of a very curious instance.
He and three other men, so he said, were sculling a very
heavily laden boat up from Maidenhead one evening, and a little above
Cookham lock they noticed a fellow and a girl, walking along the towpath,
both deep in an apparently interesting and absorbing conversation. They were
carrying a boat-hook between them, and, attached to the boat-hook was a
tow-line, which trailed behind them, its end in the water. No boat was near,
no boat was in sight. There must have been a boat attached to that tow-line
at some time or other, that was certain; but what had become of it, what
ghastly fate had overtaken it, and those who had been left in it, was buried
in mystery. Whatever the accident may have been, however, it had in no way
disturbed the young lady and gentleman, who were towing. They had the
boat-hook and they had the line, and that seemed to be all that they thought
necessary to their work.
George was about to call out and wake them up, but, at that
moment, a bright idea flashed across him, and he didn't. He got the hitcher
instead, and reached over, and drew in the end of the tow-line; and they
made a loop in it, and put it over their mast, and then they tidied up the
sculls, and went and sat down in the stern, and lit their pipes.
And that young man and young woman towed those four hulking
chaps and a heavy boat up to Marlow.
George said he never saw so much thoughtful sadness
concentrated into one glance before, as when, at the lock, that young couple
grasped the idea that, for the last two miles, they had been towing the
wrong boat. George fancied that, if it had not been for the restraining
influence of the sweet woman at his side, the young man might have given way
to violent language.
The maiden was the first to recover from her surprise, and,
when she did, she clasped her hands, and said, wildly:
"Oh, Henry, then WHERE is auntie?"
"Did they ever recover the old lady?" asked Harris.
George replied he did not know.
Another example of the dangerous want of sympathy between
tower and towed was witnessed by George and myself once up near Walton. It
was where the tow-path shelves gently down into the water, and we were
camping on the opposite bank, noticing things in general. By-and-by a small
boat came in sight, towed through the water at a tremendous pace by a
powerful barge horse, on which sat a very small boy. Scattered about the
boat, in dreamy and reposeful attitudes, lay five fellows, the man who was
steering having a particularly restful appearance.
"I should like to see him pull the wrong line," murmured
George, as they passed. And at that precise moment the man did it, and the
boat rushed up the bank with a noise like the ripping up of forty thousand
linen sheets. Two men, a hamper, and three oars immediately left the boat on
the larboard side, and reclined on the bank, and one and a half moments
afterwards, two other men disembarked from the starboard, and sat down among
boat-hooks and sails and carpet-bags and bottles. The last man went on
twenty yards further, and then got out on his head.
This seemed to sort of lighten the boat, and it went on much
easier, the small boy shouting at the top of his voice, and urging his steed
into a gallop. The fellows sat up and stared at one another. It was some
seconds before they realised what had happened to them, but, when they did,
they began to shout lustily for the boy to stop. He, however, was too much
occupied with the horse to hear them, and we watched them, flying after him,
until the distance hid them from view.
I cannot say I was sorry at their mishap. Indeed, I only
wish that all the young fools who have their boats towed in this fashion -
and plenty do - could meet with similar misfortunes. Besides the risk they
run themselves, they become a danger and an annoyance to every other boat
they pass. Going at the pace they do, it is impossible for them to get out
of anybody else's way, or for anybody else to get out of theirs. Their line
gets hitched across your mast, and overturns you, or it catches somebody in
the boat, and either throws them into the water, or cuts their face open.
The best plan is to stand your ground, and be prepared to keep them off with
the butt-end of a mast.
Of all experiences in connection with towing, the most
exciting is being towed by girls. It is a sensation that nobody ought to
miss. It takes three girls to tow always; two hold the rope, and the other
one runs round and round, and giggles. They generally begin by getting
themselves tied up. They get the line round their legs, and have to sit down
on the path and undo each other, and then they twist it round their necks,
and are nearly strangled. They fix it straight, however, at last, and start
off at a run, pulling the boat along at quite a dangerous pace. At the end
of a hundred yards they are naturally breathless, and suddenly stop, and all
sit down on the grass and laugh, and your boat drifts out to mid- stream and
turns round, before you know what has happened, or can get hold of a scull.
Then they stand up, and are surprised.
"Oh, look!" they say; "he's gone right out into the middle."
They pull on pretty steadily for a bit, after this, and then
it all at once occurs to one of them that she will pin up her frock, and
they ease up for the purpose, and the boat runs aground.
You jump up, and push it off, and you shout to them not to
stop.
"Yes. What's the matter?" they shout back.
"Don't stop," you roar.
"Don't what?"
"Don't stop - go on - go on!"
"Go back, Emily, and see what it is they want," says one;
and Emily comes back, and asks what it is.
"What do you want?" she says; "anything happened?"
" No," you reply, "it's all right; only go on, you know -
don't stop."
"Why not?"
"Why, we can't steer, if you keep stopping. You must keep
some way on the boat."
"Keep some what?"
"Some way - you must keep the boat moving."
"Oh, all right, I'll tell `em. Are we doing it all right?"
"Oh, yes, very nicely, indeed, only don't stop."
"It doesn't seem difficult at all. I thought it was so
hard."
"Oh, no, it's simple enough. You want to keep on steady at
it, that's all."
"I see. Give me out my red shawl, it's under the cushion."
You find the shawl, and hand it out, and by this time
another one has come back and thinks she will have hers too, and they take
Mary's on chance, and Mary does not want it, so they bring it back and have
a pocket-comb instead. It is about twenty minutes before they get off again,
and, at the next corner, they see a cow, and you have to leave the boat to
chivy the cow out of their way.
There is never a dull moment in the boat while girls are
towing it.
George got the line right after a while, and towed us
steadily on to Penton Hook. There we discussed the important question of
camping. We had decided to sleep on board that night, and we had either to
lay up just about there, or go on past Staines. It seemed early to think
about shutting up then, however, with the sun still in the heavens, and we
settled to push straight on for Runnymead, three and a half miles further, a
quiet wooded part of the river, and where there is good shelter.
We all wished, however, afterward that we had stopped at
Penton Hook. Three or four miles up stream is a trifle, early in the
morning, but it is a weary pull at the end of a long day. You take no
interest in the scenery during these last few miles. You do not chat and
laugh. Every half-mile you cover seems like two. You can hardly believe you
are only where you are, and you are convinced that the map must be wrong;
and, when you have trudged along for what seems to you at least ten miles,
and still the lock is not in sight, you begin to seriously fear that
somebody must have sneaked it, and run off with it.
I remember being terribly upset once up the river (in a
figurative sense, I mean). I was out with a young lady - cousin on my
mother's side - and we were pulling down to Goring. It was rather late, and
we were anxious to get in - at least SHE was anxious to get in. It was
half-past six when we reached Benson's lock, and dusk was drawing on, and
she began to get excited then. She said she must be in to supper. I said it
was a thing I felt I wanted to be in at, too; and I drew out a map I had
with me to see exactly how far it was. I saw it was just a mile and a half
to the next lock - Wallingford - and five on from there to Cleeve.
"Oh, it's all right!" I said. "We'll be through the next
lock before seven, and then there is only one more;" and I settled down and
pulled steadily away.
We passed the bridge, and soon after that I asked if she saw
the lock.
She said no, she did not see any lock; and I said, "Oh!" and pulled on.
Another five minutes went by, and then I asked her to look again.
"No," she said; "I can't see any signs of a lock."
"You - you are sure you know a lock, when you do see one?" I
asked hesitatingly, not wishing to offend her.
The question did offend her, however, and she suggested that
I had better look for myself; so I laid down the sculls, and took a view.
The river stretched out straight before us in the twilight for about a mile;
not a ghost of a lock was to be seen.
"You don't think we have lost our way, do you?" asked my
companion.
I did not see how that was possible; though, as I suggested,
we might have somehow got into the weir stream, and be making for the falls.
This idea did not comfort her in the least, and she began to
cry. She said we should both be drowned, and that it was a judgment on her
for coming out with me.
It seemed an excessive punishment, I thought; but my cousin
thought not, and hoped it would all soon be over.
I tried to reassure her, and to make light of the whole
affair. I said that the fact evidently was that I was not rowing as fast as
I fancied I was, but that we should soon reach the lock now; and I pulled on
for another mile.
Then I began to get nervous myself. I looked again at the
map. There was Wallingford lock, clearly marked, a mile and a half below
Benson's. It was a good, reliable map; and, besides, I recollected the lock
myself. I had been through it twice. Where were we? What had happened to us?
I began to think it must be all a dream, and that I was really asleep in
bed, and should wake up in a minute, and be told it was past ten.
I asked my cousin if she thought it could be a dream, and
she replied that she was just about to ask me the same question; and then we
both wondered if we were both asleep, and if so, who was the real one that
was dreaming, and who was the one that was only a dream; it got quite
interesting.
I still went on pulling, however, and still no lock came in
sight, and the river grew more and more gloomy and mysterious under the
gathering shadows of night, and things seemed to be getting weird and
uncanny. I thought of hobgoblins and banshees, and will-o'-the-wisps, and
those wicked girls who sit up all night on rocks, and lure people into
whirl- pools and things; and I wished I had been a better man, and knew more
hymns; and in the middle of these reflections I heard the blessed strains of
"He's got `em on," played, badly, on a concertina, and knew that we were
saved.
I do not admire the tones of a concertina, as a rule; but,
oh! how beautiful the music seemed to us both then - far, far more beautiful
than the voice of Orpheus or the lute of Apollo, or anything of that sort
could have sounded. Heavenly melody, in our then state of mind, would only
have still further harrowed us. A soul-moving harmony, correctly performed,
we should have taken as a spirit-warning, and have given up all hope. But
about the strains of "He's got `em on," jerked spasmodically, and with
involuntary variations, out of a wheezy accordion, there was something
singularly human and reassuring.
The sweet sounds drew nearer, and soon the boat from which
they were worked lay alongside us.
It contained a party of provincial `Arrys and `Arriets, out
for a moonlight sail. (There was not any moon, but that was not their
fault.) I never saw more attractive, lovable people in all my life. I hailed
them, and asked if they could tell me the way to Wallingford lock; and I
explained that I had been looking for it for the last two hours.
"Wallingford lock!" they answered. "Lor' love you, sir,
that's been done away with for over a year. There ain't no Wallingford lock
now, sir. You're close to Cleeve now. Blow me tight if `ere ain't a
gentleman been looking for Wallingford lock, Bill!"
I had never thought of that. I wanted to fall upon all their
necks and bless them; but the stream was running too strong just there to
allow of this, so I had to content myself with mere cold-sounding words of
gratitude.
We thanked them over and over again, and we said it was a
lovely night, and we wished them a pleasant trip, and, I think, I invited
them all to come and spend a week with me, and my cousin said her mother
would be so pleased to see them. And we sang the soldiers' chorus out of
FAUST, and got home in time for supper, after all.
CHAPTER X.
OUR FIRST NIGHT. - UNDER CANVAS. -
AN APPEAL FOR HELP. - CONTRARINESS OF TEA-KETTLES, HOW TO OVERCOME. -
SUPPER. - HOW TO FEEL VIRTUOUS. - WANTED! A COMFORTABLY-APPOINTED,
WELL-DRAINED DESERT ISLAND, NEIGHBOURHOOD OF SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN PREFERRED.
- FUNNY THING THAT HAPPENED TO GEORGE'S FATHER. - A RESTLESS NIGHT.
HARRIS and I began to think that Bell Weir lock must have
been done away with after the same manner. George had towed us up to
Staines, and we had taken the boat from there, and it seemed that we were
dragging fifty tons after us, and were walking forty miles. It was half-past
seven when we were through, and we all got in, and sculled up close to the
left bank, looking out for a spot to haul up in.
We had originally intended to go on to Magna Charta Island,
a sweetly pretty part of the river, where it winds through a soft, green
valley, and to camp in one of the many picturesque inlets to be found round
that tiny shore. But, somehow, we did not feel that we yearned for the
picturesque nearly so much now as we had earlier in the day. A bit of water
between a coal-barge and a gas-works would have quite satisfied us for that
night. We did not want scenery. We wanted to have our supper and go to bed.
However, we did pull up to the point - "Picnic Point," it is called - and
dropped into a very pleasant nook under a great elm-tree, to the spreading
roots of which we fastened the boat.
Then we thought we were going to have supper (we had
dispensed with tea, so as to save time), but George said no; that we had
better get the canvas up first, before it got quite dark, and while we could
see what we were doing. Then, he said, all our work would be done, and we
could sit down to eat with an easy mind.
That canvas wanted more putting up than I think any of us
had bargained for. It looked so simple in the abstract. You took five iron
arches, like gigantic croquet hoops, and fitted them up over the boat, and
then stretched the canvas over them, and fastened it down: it would take
quite ten minutes, we thought.
That was an under-estimate.
We took up the hoops, and began to drop them into the
sockets placed for them. You would not imagine this to be dangerous work;
but, looking back now, the wonder to me is that any of us are alive to tell
the tale. They were not hoops, they were demons. First they would not fit
into their sockets at all, and we had to jump on them, and kick them, and
hammer at them with the boat-hook; and, when they were in, it turned out
that they were the wrong hoops for those particular sockets, and they had to
come out again.
But they would not come out, until two of us had gone and
struggled with them for five minutes, when they would jump up suddenly, and
try and throw us into the water and drown us. They had hinges in the middle,
and, when we were not looking, they nipped us with these hinges in delicate
parts of the body; and, while we were wrestling with one side of the hoop,
and endeavouring to persuade it to do its duty, the other side would come
behind us in a cowardly manner, and hit us over the head.
We got them fixed at last, and then all that was to be done
was to arrange the covering over them. George unrolled it, and fastened one
end over the nose of the boat. Harris stood in the middle to take it from
George and roll it on to me, and I kept by the stern to receive it. It was a
long time coming down to me. George did his part all right, but it was new
work to Harris, and he bungled it.
How he managed it I do not know, he could not explain
himself; but by some mysterious process or other he succeeded, after ten
minutes of superhuman effort, in getting himself completely rolled up in it.
He was so firmly wrapped round and tucked in and folded over, that he could
not get out. He, of course, made frantic struggles for freedom - the
birthright of every Englishman, - and, in doing so (I learned this
afterwards), knocked over George; and then George, swearing at Harris, began
to struggle too, and got himself entangled and rolled up.
I knew nothing about all this at the time. I did not
understand the business at all myself. I had been told to stand where I was,
and wait till the canvas came to me, and Montmorency and I stood there and
waited, both as good as gold. We could see the canvas being violently jerked
and tossed about, pretty considerably; but we supposed this was part of the
method, and did not interfere.
We also heard much smothered language coming from underneath
it, and we guessed that they were finding the job rather troublesome, and
concluded that we would wait until things had got a little simpler before we
joined in.
We waited some time, but matters seemed to get only more and
more involved, until, at last, George's head came wriggling out over the
side of the boat, and spoke up.
It said:
"Give us a hand here, can't you, you cuckoo; standing there
like a stuffed mummy, when you see we are both being suffocated, you dummy!"
I never could withstand an appeal for help, so I went and
undid them; not before it was time, either, for Harris was nearly black in
the face.
It took us half an hour's hard labour, after that, before it
was properly up, and then we cleared the decks, and got out supper. We put
the kettle on to boil, up in the nose of the boat, and went down to the
stern and pretended to take no notice of it, but set to work to get the
other things out.
That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river.
If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even
sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to
have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then you will soon
hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea.
It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talk
very loudly to each other about how you don't need any tea, and are not
going to have any. You get near the kettle, so that it can overhear you, and
then you shout out, "I don't want any tea; do you, George?" to which George
shouts back, "Oh, no, I don't like tea; we'll have lemonade instead - tea's
so indigestible." Upon which the kettle boils over, and puts the stove out.
We adopted this harmless bit of trickery, and the result was
that, by the time everything else was ready, the tea was waiting. Then we
lit the lantern, and squatted down to supper.
We wanted that supper.
For five-and-thirty minutes not a sound was heard throughout
the length and breadth of that boat, save the clank of cutlery and crockery,
and the steady grinding of four sets of molars. At the end of
five-and-thirty minutes, Harris said, "Ah!" and took his left leg out from
under him and put his right one there instead.
Five minutes afterwards, George said, "Ah!" too, and threw
his plate out on the bank; and, three minutes later than that, Montmorency
gave the first sign of contentment he had exhibited since we had started,
and rolled over on his side, and spread his legs out; and then I said, "Ah!"
and bent my head back, and bumped it against one of the hoops, but I did not
mind it. I did not even swear.
How good one feels when one is full - how satisfied with
ourselves and with the world! People who have tried it, tell me that a clear
conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the
business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained. One feels
so forgiving and generous after a substantial and well-digested meal - so
noble-minded, so kindly-hearted.
It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our
digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills
so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions. After eggs and bacon, it
says, "Work!" After beefsteak and porter, it says, "Sleep!" After a cup of
tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than three
minutes), it says to the brain, "Now, rise, and show your strength. Be
eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into
life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god- like
spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of
flaming stars to the gates of eternity!"
After hot muffins, it says, "Be dull and soulless, like a
beast of the field - a brainless animal, with listless eye, unlit by any ray
of fancy, or of hope, or fear, or love, or life." And after brandy, taken in
sufficient quantity, it says, "Now, come, fool, grin and tumble, that your
fellow-men may laugh - drivel in folly, and splutter in senseless sounds,
and show what a helpless ninny is poor man whose wit and will are drowned,
like kittens, side by side, in half an inch of alcohol."
We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach.
Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly
your stomach, and diet it with care and judgment. Then virtue and
contentment will come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of
your own; and you will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender
father - a noble, pious man.
Before our supper, Harris and George and I were quarrelsome
and snappy and ill-tempered; after our supper, we sat and beamed on one
another, and we beamed upon the dog, too. We loved each other, we loved
everybody. Harris, in moving about, trod on George's corn. Had this happened
before supper, George would have expressed wishes and desires concerning
Harris's fate in this world and the next that would have made a thoughtful
man shudder.
As it was, he said: "Steady, old man; `ware wheat."
And Harris, instead of merely observing, in his most
unpleasant tones, that a fellow could hardly help treading on some bit of
George's foot, if he had to move about at all within ten yards of where
George was sitting, suggesting that George never ought to come into an
ordinary sized boat with feet that length, and advising him to hang them
over the side, as he would have done before supper, now said: "Oh, I'm so
sorry, old chap; I hope I haven't hurt you."
And George said: "Not at all;" that it was his fault; and
Harris said no, it was his.
It was quite pretty to hear them.
We lit our pipes, and sat, looking out on the quiet night,
and talked.
George said why could not we be always like this - away from
the world, with its sin and temptation, leading sober, peaceful lives, and
doing good. I said it was the sort of thing I had often longed for myself;
and we discussed the possibility of our going away, we four, to some handy,
well-fitted desert island, and living there in the woods.
Harris said that the danger about desert islands, as far as
he had heard, was that they were so damp: but George said no, not if
properly drained.
And then we got on to drains, and that put George in mind of
a very funny thing that happened to his father once. He said his father was
travelling with another fellow through Wales, and, one night, they stopped
at a little inn, where there were some other fellows, and they joined the
other fellows, and spent the evening with them.
They had a very jolly evening, and sat up late, and, by the
time they came to go to bed, they (this was when George's father was a very
young man) were slightly jolly, too. They (George's father and George's
father's friend) were to sleep in the same room, but in different beds. They
took the candle, and went up. The candle lurched up against the wall when
they got into the room, and went out, and they had to undress and grope into
bed in the dark. This they did; but, instead of getting into separate beds,
as they thought they were doing, they both climbed into the same one without
knowing it - one getting in with his head at the top, and the other crawling
in from the opposite side of the compass, and lying with his feet on the
pillow.
There was silence for a moment, and then George's father
said:
"Joe!"
"What's the matter, Tom?" replied Joe's voice from the other
end of the bed.
"Why, there's a man in my bed," said George's father;
"here's his feet on my pillow."
"Well, it's an extraordinary thing, Tom," answered the
other; "but I'm blest if there isn't a man in my bed, too!"
"What are you going to do?" asked George's father.
"Well, I'm going to chuck him out," replied Joe.
"So am I," said George's father, valiantly.
There was a brief struggle, followed by two heavy bumps on
the floor, and then a rather doleful voice said:
"I say, Tom!"
"Yes!"
"How have you got on?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, my man's chucked me out."
"So's mine! I say, I don't think much of this inn, do you?"
"What was the name of that inn?" said Harris.
"The Pig and Whistle," said George. "Why?"
"Ah, no, then it isn't the same," replied Harris.
"What do you mean?" queried George.
"Why it's so curious," murmured Harris, "but precisely that
very same thing happened to MY father once at a country inn. I've often
heard him tell the tale. I thought it might have been the same inn."
We turned in at ten that night, and I thought I should sleep
well, being tired; but I didn't. As a rule, I undress and put my head on the
pillow, and then somebody bangs at the door, and says it is half-past eight:
but, to-night, everything seemed against me; the novelty of it all, the
hardness of the boat, the cramped position (I was lying with my feet under
one seat, and my head on another), the sound of the lapping water round the
boat, and the wind among the branches, kept me restless and disturbed.
I did get to sleep for a few hours, and then some part of
the boat which seemed to have grown up in the night - for it certainly was
not there when we started, and it had disappeared by the morning - kept
digging into my spine. I slept through it for a while, dreaming that I had
swallowed a sovereign, and that they were cutting a hole in my back with a
gimlet, so as to try and get it out. I thought it very unkind of them, and I
told them I would owe them the money, and they should have it at the end of
the month. But they would not hear of that, and said it would be much better
if they had it then, because otherwise the interest would accumulate so. I
got quite cross with them after a bit, and told them what I thought of them,
and then they gave the gimlet such an excruciating wrench that I woke up.
The boat seemed stuffy, and my head ached; so I thought I
would step out into the cool night-air. I slipped on what clothes I could
find about - some of my own, and some of George's and Harris's - and crept
under the canvas on to the bank.
It was a glorious night. The moon had sunk, and left the
quiet earth alone with the stars. It seemed as if, in the silence and the
hush, while we her children slept, they were talking with her, their sister
- conversing of mighty mysteries in voices too vast and deep for childish
human ears to catch the sound.
They awe us, these strange stars, so cold, so clear. We are
as children whose small feet have strayed into some dim-lit temple of the
god they have been taught to worship but know not; and, standing where the
echoing dome spans the long vista of the shadowy light, glance up, half
hoping, half afraid to see some awful vision hovering there.
And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, the
night. In its great presence, our small sorrows creep away, ashamed. The day
has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil
and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us.
Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our
fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and
smiles; and, though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay
our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone.
Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand
before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a
moan. Night's heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she
takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far
away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a
mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great
Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain
and Sorrow are but the angels of God.
Only those who have worn the crown of suffering can look
upon that wondrous light; and they, when they return, may not speak of it,
or tell the mystery they know.
Once upon a time, through a strange country, there rode some
goodly knights, and their path lay by a deep wood, where tangled briars grew
very thick and strong, and tore the flesh of them that lost their way
therein. And the leaves of the trees that grew in the wood were very dark
and thick, so that no ray of light came through the branches to lighten the
gloom and sadness.
And, as they passed by that dark wood, one knight of those
that rode, missing his comrades, wandered far away, and returned to them no
more; and they, sorely grieving, rode on without him, mourning him as one
dead.
Now, when they reached the fair castle towards which they
had been journeying, they stayed there many days, and made merry; and one
night, as they sat in cheerful ease around the logs that burned in the great
hall, and drank a loving measure, there came the comrade they had lost, and
greeted them. His clothes were ragged, like a beggar's, and many sad wounds
were on his sweet flesh, but upon his face there shone a great radiance of
deep joy.
And they questioned him, asking him what had befallen him:
and he told them how in the dark wood he had lost his way, and had wandered
many days and nights, till, torn and bleeding, he had lain him down to die.
Then, when he was nigh unto death, lo! through the savage
gloom there came to him a stately maiden, and took him by the hand and led
him on through devious paths, unknown to any man, until upon the darkness of
the wood there dawned a light such as the light of day was unto but as a
little lamp unto the sun; and, in that wondrous light, our way-worn knight
saw as in a dream a vision, and so glorious, so fair the vision seemed, that
of his bleeding wounds he thought no more, but stood as one entranced, whose
joy is deep as is the sea, whereof no man can tell the depth.
And the vision faded, and the knight, kneeling upon the
ground, thanked the good saint who into that sad wood had strayed his steps,
so he had seen the vision that lay there hid.
And the name of the dark forest was Sorrow; but of the
vision that the good knight saw therein we may not speak nor tell.
CHAPTER XI.
HOW GEORGE, ONCE UPON A TIME, GOT
UP EARLY IN THE MORNING. - GEORGE, HARRIS, AND MONTMORENCY DO NOT LIKE THE
LOOK OF THE COLD WATER. - HEROISM AND DETERMINATION ON THE PART OF J. -
GEORGE AND HIS SHIRT: STORY WITH A MORAL. - HARRIS AS COOK. - HISTORICAL
RETROSPECT, SPECIALLY INSERTED FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS.
I WOKE at six the next morning; and found George awake too.
We both turned round, and tried to go to sleep again, but we could not. Had
there been any particular reason why we should not have gone to sleep again,
but have got up and dressed then and there, we should have dropped off while
we were looking at our watches, and have slept till ten. As there was no
earthly necessity for our getting up under another two hours at the very
least, and our getting up at that time was an utter absurdity, it was only
in keeping with the natural cussedness of things in general that we should
both feel that lying down for five minutes more would be death to us.
George said that the same kind of thing, only worse, had
happened to him some eighteen months ago, when he was lodging by himself in
the house of a certain Mrs. Gippings. He said his watch went wrong one
evening, and stopped at a quarter-past eight. He did not know this at the
time because, for some reason or other, he forgot to wind it up when he went
to bed (an unusual occurrence with him), and hung it up over his pillow
without ever looking at the thing.
It was in the winter when this happened, very near the
shortest day, and a week of fog into the bargain, so the fact that it was
still very dark when George woke in the morning was no guide to him as to
the time. He reached up, and hauled down his watch. It was a quarter-past
eight.
"Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" exclaimed George;
"and here have I got to be in the City by nine. Why didn't somebody call me?
Oh, this is a shame!" And he flung the watch down, and sprang out of bed,
and had a cold bath, and washed himself, and dressed himself, and shaved
himself in cold water because there was not time to wait for the hot, and
then rushed and had another look at the watch.
Whether the shaking it had received in being thrown down on
the bed had started it, or how it was, George could not say, but certain it
was that from a quarter-past eight it had begun to go, and now pointed to
twenty minutes to nine.
George snatched it up, and rushed downstairs. In the
sitting-room, all was dark and silent: there was no fire, no breakfast.
George said it was a wicked shame of Mrs. G., and he made up his mind to
tell her what he thought of her when he came home in the evening. Then he
dashed on his great-coat and hat, and, seizing his umbrella, made for the
front door. The door was not even unbolted. George anathematized Mrs. G. for
a lazy old woman, and thought it was very strange that people could not get
up at a decent, respectable time, unlocked and unbolted the door, and ran
out.
He ran hard for a quarter of a mile, and at the end of that
distance it began to be borne in upon him as a strange and curious thing
that there were so few people about, and that there were no shops open. It
was certainly a very dark and foggy morning, but still it seemed an unusual
course to stop all business on that account. HE had to go to business: why
should other people stop in bed merely because it was dark and foggy!
At length he reached Holborn. Not a shutter was down! not a
bus was about! There were three men in sight, one of whom was a policeman; a
market-cart full of cabbages, and a dilapidated looking cab. George pulled
out his watch and looked at it: it was five minutes to nine! He stood still
and counted his pulse. He stooped down and felt his legs. Then, with his
watch still in his hand, he went up to the policeman, and asked him if he
knew what the time was.
"What's the time?" said the man, eyeing George up and down
with evident suspicion; "why, if you listen you will hear it strike."
George listened, and a neighbouring clock immediately
obliged.
"But it's only gone three!" said George in an injured tone,
when it had finished.
"Well, and how many did you want it to go?" replied the
constable.
"Why, nine," said George, showing his watch.
"Do you know where you live?" said the guardian of public
order, severely.
George thought, and gave the address.
"Oh! that's where it is, is it?" replied the man; "well, you
take my advice and go there quietly, and take that watch of yours with you;
and don't let's have any more of it."
And George went home again, musing as he walked along, and
let himself in.
At first, when he got in, he determined to undress and go to
bed again; but when he thought of the redressing and re-washing, and the
having of another bath, he determined he would not, but would sit up and go
to sleep in the easy-chair.
But he could not get to sleep: he never felt more wakeful in
his life; so he lit the lamp and got out the chess-board, and played himself
a game of chess. But even that did not enliven him: it seemed slow somehow;
so he gave chess up and tried to read. He did not seem able to take any sort
of interest in reading either, so he put on his coat again and went out for
a walk.
It was horribly lonesome and dismal, and all the policemen
he met regarded him with undisguised suspicion, and turned their lanterns on
him and followed him about, and this had such an effect upon him at last
that he began to feel as if he really had done something, and he got to
slinking down the by-streets and hiding in dark doorways when he heard the
regulation flip-flop approaching.
Of course, this conduct made the force only more distrustful
of him than ever, and they would come and rout him out and ask him what he
was doing there; and when he answered, "Nothing," he had merely come out for
a stroll (it was then four o'clock in the morning), they looked as though
they did not believe him, and two plain-clothes constables came home with
him to see if he really did live where he had said he did. They saw him go
in with his key, and then they took up a position opposite and watched the
house.
He thought he would light the fire when he got inside, and
make himself some breakfast, just to pass away the time; but he did not seem
able to handle anything from a scuttleful of coals to a teaspoon without
dropping it or falling over it, and making such a noise that he was in
mortal fear that it would wake Mrs. G. up, and that she would think it was
burglars and open the window and call "Police!" and then these two
detectives would rush in and handcuff him, and march him off to the
police-court.
He was in a morbidly nervous state by this time, and he
pictured the trial, and his trying to explain the circumstances to the jury,
and nobody believing him, and his being sentenced to twenty years' penal
servitude, and his mother dying of a broken heart. So he gave up trying to
get breakfast, and wrapped himself up in his overcoat and sat in the
easy-chair till Mrs. G came down at half-past seven.
He said he had never got up too early since that morning: it
had been such a warning to him.
We had been sitting huddled up in our rugs while George had
been telling me this true story, and on his finishing it I set to work to
wake up Harris with a scull. The third prod did it: and he turned over on
the other side, and said he would be down in a minute, and that he would
have his lace-up boots. We soon let him know where he was, however, by the
aid of the hitcher, and he sat up suddenly, sending Montmorency, who had
been sleeping the sleep of the just right on the middle of his chest,
sprawling across the boat.
Then we pulled up the canvas, and all four of us poked our
heads out over the off-side, and looked down at the water and shivered. The
idea, overnight, had been that we should get up early in the morning, fling
off our rugs and shawls, and, throwing back the canvas, spring into the
river with a joyous shout, and revel in a long delicious swim. Somehow, now
the morning had come, the notion seemed less tempting. The water looked damp
and chilly: the wind felt cold.
"Well, who's going to be first in?" said Harris at last.
There was no rush for precedence. George settled the matter
so far as he was concerned by retiring into the boat and pulling on his
socks. Montmorency gave vent to an involuntary howl, as if merely thinking
of the thing had given him the horrors; and Harris said it would be so
difficult to get into the boat again, and went back and sorted out his
trousers.
I did not altogether like to give in, though I did not
relish the plunge. There might be snags about, or weeds, I thought. I meant
to compromise matters by going down to the edge and just throwing the water
over myself; so I took a towel and crept out on the bank and wormed my way
along on to the branch of a tree that dipped down into the water.
It was bitterly cold. The wind cut like a knife. I thought I
would not throw the water over myself after all. I would go back into the
boat and dress; and I turned to do so; and, as I turned, the silly branch
gave way, and I and the towel went in together with a tremendous splash, and
I was out mid-stream with a gallon of Thames water inside me before I knew
what had happened.
"By Jove! old J.'s gone in," I heard Harris say, as I came
blowing to the surface. "I didn't think he'd have the pluck to do it. Did
you?"
"Is it all right?" sung out George.
"Lovely," I spluttered back. "You are duffers not to come
in. I wouldn't have missed this for worlds. Why won't you try it? It only
wants a little determination."
But I could not persuade them.
Rather an amusing thing happened while dressing that
morning. I was very cold when I got back into the boat, and, in my hurry to
get my shirt on, I accidentally jerked it into the water. It made me awfully
wild, especially as George burst out laughing. I could not see anything to
laugh at, and I told George so, and he only laughed the more. I never saw a
man laugh so much. I quite lost my temper with him at last, and I pointed
out to him what a drivelling maniac of an imbecile idiot he was; but he only
roared the louder. And then, just as I was landing the shirt, I noticed that
it was not my shirt at all, but George's, which I had mistaken for mine;
whereupon the humour of the thing struck me for the first time, and I began
to laugh. And the more I looked from George's wet shirt to George, roaring
with laughter, the more I was amused, and I laughed so much that I had to
let the shirt fall back into the water again.
"Ar'n't you - you - going to get it out?" said George,
between his shrieks.
I could not answer him at all for a while, I was laughing
so, but, at last, between my peals I managed to jerk out:
"It isn't my shirt - it's YOURS!"
I never saw a man's face change from lively to severe so
suddenly in all my life before.
"What!" he yelled, springing up. "You silly cuckoo! Why
can't you be more careful what you're doing? Why the deuce don't you go and
dress on the bank? You're not fit to be in a boat, you're not. Gimme the
hitcher."
I tried to make him see the fun of the thing, but he could
not. George is very dense at seeing a joke sometimes.
Harris proposed that we should have scrambled eggs for
breakfast. He said he would cook them. It seemed, from his account, that he
was very good at doing scrambled eggs. He often did them at picnics and when
out on yachts. He was quite famous for them. People who had once tasted his
scrambled eggs, so we gathered from his conversation, never cared for any
other food afterwards, but pined away and died when they could not get them.
It made our mouths water to hear him talk about the things,
and we handed him out the stove and the frying-pan and all the eggs that had
not smashed and gone over everything in the hamper, and begged him to begin.
He had some trouble in breaking the eggs - or rather not so
much trouble in breaking them exactly as in getting them into the frying-pan
when broken, and keeping them off his trousers, and preventing them from
running up his sleeve; but he fixed some half-a-dozen into the pan at last,
and then squatted down by the side of the stove and chivied them about with
a fork.
It seemed harassing work, so far as George and I could
judge. Whenever he went near the pan he burned himself, and then he would
drop everything and dance round the stove, flicking his fingers about and
cursing the things. Indeed, every time George and I looked round at him he
was sure to be performing this feat. We thought at first that it was a
necessary part of the culinary arrangements.
We did not know what scrambled eggs were, and we fancied
that it must be some Red Indian or Sandwich Islands sort of dish that
required dances and incantations for its proper cooking. Montmorency went
and put his nose over it once, and the fat spluttered up and scalded him,
and then he began dancing and cursing. Altogether it was one of the most
interesting and exciting operations I have ever witnessed. George and I were
both quite sorry when it was over.
The result was not altogether the success that Harris had
anticipated. There seemed so little to show for the business. Six eggs had
gone into the frying-pan, and all that came out was a teaspoonful of burnt
and unappetizing looking mess.
Harris said it was the fault of the frying-pan, and thought
it would have gone better if we had had a fish-kettle and a gas-stove; and
we decided not to attempt the dish again until we had those aids to
housekeeping by us.
The sun had got more powerful by the time we had finished
breakfast, and the wind had dropped, and it was as lovely a morning as one
could desire. Little was in sight to remind us of the nineteenth century;
and, as we looked out upon the river in the morning sunlight, we could
almost fancy that the centuries between us and that ever-to-be-famous June
morning of 1215 had been drawn aside, and that we, English yeomen's sons in
homespun cloth, with dirk at belt, were waiting there to witness the writing
of that stupendous page of history, the meaning whereof was to be translated
to the common people some four hundred and odd years later by one Oliver
Cromwell, who had deeply studied it.
It is a fine summer morning - sunny, soft, and still. But
through the air there runs a thrill of coming stir. King John has slept at
Duncroft Hall, and all the day before the little town of Staines has echoed
to the clang of armed men, and the clatter of great horses over its rough
stones, and the shouts of captains, and the grim oaths and surly jests of
bearded bowmen, billmen, pikemen, and strange-speaking foreign spearmen.
Gay-cloaked companies of knights and squires have ridden in,
all travel- stained and dusty. And all the evening long the timid townsmen's
doors have had to be quick opened to let in rough groups of soldiers, for
whom there must be found both board and lodging, and the best of both, or
woe betide the house and all within; for the sword is judge and jury,
plaintiff and executioner, in these tempestuous times, and pays for what it
takes by sparing those from whom it takes it, if it pleases it to do so.
Round the camp-fire in the market-place gather still more of
the Barons' troops, and eat and drink deep, and bellow forth roystering
drinking songs, and gamble and quarrel as the evening grows and deepens into
night. The firelight sheds quaint shadows on their piled-up arms and on
their uncouth forms. The children of the town steal round to watch them,
wondering; and brawny country wenches, laughing, draw near to bandy ale-
house jest and jibe with the swaggering troopers, so unlike the village
swains, who, now despised, stand apart behind, with vacant grins upon their
broad, peering faces. And out from the fields around, glitter the faint
lights of more distant camps, as here some great lord's followers lie
mustered, and there false John's French mercenaries hover like crouching
wolves without the town.
And so, with sentinel in each dark street, and twinkling
watch-fires on each height around, the night has worn away, and over this
fair valley of old Thame has broken the morning of the great day that is to
close so big with the fate of ages yet unborn.
Ever since grey dawn, in the lower of the two islands, just
above where we are standing, there has been great clamour, and the sound of
many workmen. The great pavilion brought there yester eve is being raised,
and carpenters are busy nailing tiers of seats, while `prentices from London
town are there with many-coloured stuffs and silks and cloth of gold and
silver.
And now, lo! down upon the road that winds along the river's
bank from Staines there come towards us, laughing and talking together in
deep guttural bass, a half-a-score of stalwart halbert-men - Barons' men,
these - and halt at a hundred yards or so above us, on the other bank, and
lean upon their arms, and wait.
And so, from hour to hour, march up along the road ever
fresh groups and bands of armed men, their casques and breastplates flashing
back the long low lines of morning sunlight, until, as far as eye can reach,
the way seems thick with glittering steel and prancing steeds. And shouting
horsemen are galloping from group to group, and little banners are
fluttering lazily in the warm breeze, and every now and then there is a
deeper stir as the ranks make way on either side, and some great Baron on
his war-horse, with his guard of squires around him, passes along to take
his station at the head of his serfs and vassals.
And up the slope of Cooper's Hill, just opposite, are
gathered the wondering rustics and curious townsfolk, who have run from
Staines, and none are quite sure what the bustle is about, but each one has
a different version of the great event that they have come to see; and some
say that much good to all the people will come from this day's work; but the
old men shake their heads, for they have heard such tales before.
And all the river down to Staines is dotted with small craft
and boats and tiny coracles - which last are growing out of favour now, and
are used only by the poorer folk. Over the rapids, where in after years trim
Bell Weir lock will stand, they have been forced or dragged by their sturdy
rowers, and now are crowding up as near as they dare come to the great
covered barges, which lie in readiness to bear King John to where the
fateful Charter waits his signing.
It is noon, and we and all the people have been waiting
patient for many an hour, and the rumour has run round that slippery John
has again escaped from the Barons' grasp, and has stolen away from Duncroft
Hall with his mercenaries at his heels, and will soon be doing other work
than signing charters for his people's liberty.
Not so! This time the grip upon him has been one of iron,
and he has slid and wriggled in vain. Far down the road a little cloud of
dust has risen, and draws nearer and grows larger, and the pattering of many
hoofs grows louder, and in and out between the scattered groups of drawn-up
men, there pushes on its way a brilliant cavalcade of gay-dressed lords and
knights. And front and rear, and either flank, there ride the yeomen of the
Barons, and in the midst King John.
He rides to where the barges lie in readiness, and the great
Barons step forth from their ranks to meet him. He greets them with a smile
and laugh, and pleasant honeyed words, as though it were some feast in his
honour to which he had been invited. But as he rises to dismount, he casts
one hurried glance from his own French mercenaries drawn up in the rear to
the grim ranks of the Barons' men that hem him in.
Is it too late? One fierce blow at the unsuspecting horseman
at his side, one cry to his French troops, one desperate charge upon the
unready lines before him, and these rebellious Barons might rue the day they
dared to thwart his plans! A bolder hand might have turned the game even at
that point. Had it been a Richard there! the cup of liberty might have been
dashed from England's lips, and the taste of freedom held back for a hundred
years.
But the heart of King John sinks before the stern faces of
the English fighting men, and the arm of King John drops back on to his
rein, and he dismounts and takes his seat in the foremost barge. And the
Barons follow in, with each mailed hand upon the sword-hilt, and the word is
given to let go.
Slowly the heavy, bright-decked barges leave the shore of
Runningmede. Slowly against the swift current they work their ponderous way,
till, with a low grumble, they grate against the bank of the little island
that from this day will bear the name of Magna Charta Island. And King John
has stepped upon the shore, and we wait in breathless silence till a great
shout cleaves the air, and the great cornerstone in England's temple of
liberty has, now we know, been firmly laid.
CHAPTER XII.
HENRY VIII. AND ANNE BOLEYN. -
DISADVANTAGES OF LIVING IN SAME HOUSE WITH PAIR OF LOVERS. - A TRYING TIME
FOR THE ENGLISH NATION. - A NIGHT SEARCH FOR THE PICTURESQUE. - HOMELESS AND
HOUSELESS. - HARRIS PREPARES TO DIE. - AN ANGEL COMES ALONG. - EFFECT OF
SUDDEN JOY ON HARRIS. - A LITTLE SUPPER. - LUNCH. - HIGH PRICE FOR MUSTARD.
- A FEARFUL BATTLE. - MAIDENHEAD. - SAILING. - THREE FISHERS. - WE ARE
CURSED.
I WAS sitting on the bank, conjuring up this scene to
myself, when George remarked that when I was quite rested, perhaps I would
not mind helping to wash up; and, thus recalled from the days of the
glorious past to the prosaic present, with all its misery and sin, I slid
down into the boat and cleaned out the frying-pan with a stick of wood and a
tuft of grass, polishing it up finally with George's wet shirt.
We went over to Magna Charta Island, and had a look at the
stone which stands in the cottage there and on which the great Charter is
said to have been signed; though, as to whether it really was signed there,
or, as some say, on the other bank at "Runningmede," I decline to commit
myself. As far as my own personal opinion goes, however, I am inclined to
give weight to the popular island theory. Certainly, had I been one of the
Barons, at the time, I should have strongly urged upon my comrades the
advisability of our getting such a slippery customer as King John on to the
island, where there was less chance of surprises and tricks.
There are the ruins of an old priory in the grounds of
Ankerwyke House, which is close to Picnic Point, and it was round about the
grounds of this old priory that Henry VIII. is said to have waited for and
met Anne Boleyn. He also used to meet her at Hever Castle in Kent, and also
somewhere near St. Albans. It must have been difficult for the people of
England in those days to have found a spot where these thoughtless young
folk were NOT spooning.
Have you ever been in a house where there are a couple
courting? It is most trying. You think you will go and sit in the
drawing-room, and you march off there. As you open the door, you hear a
noise as if somebody had suddenly recollected something, and, when you get
in, Emily is over by the window, full of interest in the opposite side of
the road, and your friend, John Edward, is at the other end of the room with
his whole soul held in thrall by photographs of other people's relatives.
"Oh!" you say, pausing at the door, "I didn't know anybody
was here."
"Oh! didn't you?" says Emily, coldly, in a tone which
implies that she does not believe you.
You hang about for a bit, then you say:
"It's very dark. Why don't you light the gas?"
John Edward says, "Oh!" he hadn't noticed it; and Emily says
that papa does not like the gas lit in the afternoon.
You tell them one or two items of news, and give them your
views and opinions on the Irish question; but this does not appear to
interest them. All they remark on any subject is, "Oh!" "Is it?" "Did he?"
"Yes," and "You don't say so!" And, after ten minutes of such style of
conversation, you edge up to the door, and slip out, and are surprised to
find that the door immediately closes behind you, and shuts itself, without
your having touched it.
Half an hour later, you think you will try a pipe in the
conservatory. The only chair in the place is occupied by Emily; and John
Edward, if the language of clothes can be relied upon, has evidently been
sitting on the floor. They do not speak, but they give you a look that says
all that can be said in a civilised community; and you back out promptly and
shut the door behind you.
You are afraid to poke your nose into any room in the house
now; so, after walking up and down the stairs for a while, you go and sit in
your own bedroom. This becomes uninteresting, however, after a time, and so
you put on your hat and stroll out into the garden. You walk down the path,
and as you pass the summer-house you glance in, and there are those two
young idiots, huddled up into one corner of it; and they see you, and are
evidently under the idea that, for some wicked purpose of your own, you are
following them about.
"Why don't they have a special room for this sort of thing,
and make people keep to it?" you mutter; and you rush back to the hall and
get your umbrella and go out.
It must have been much like this when that foolish boy Henry
VIII. was courting his little Anne. People in Buckinghamshire would have
come upon them unexpectedly when they were mooning round Windsor and
Wraysbury, and have exclaimed, "Oh! you here!" and Henry would have blushed
and said, "Yes; he'd just come over to see a man;" and Anne would have said,
"Oh, I'm so glad to see you! Isn't it funny? I've just met Mr. Henry VIII.
in the lane, and he's going the same way I am."
Then those people would have gone away and said to
themselves: "Oh! we'd better get out of here while this billing and cooing
is on. We'll go down to Kent."
And they would go to Kent, and the first thing they would
see in Kent, when they got there, would be Henry and Anne fooling round
Hever Castle.
"Oh, drat this!" they would have said. "Here, let's go away.
I can't stand any more of it. Let's go to St. Albans - nice quiet place, St.
Albans."
And when they reached St. Albans, there would be that
wretched couple, kissing under the Abbey walls. Then these folks would go
and be pirates until the marriage was over.
From Picnic Point to Old Windsor Lock is a delightful bit of
the river. A shady road, dotted here and there with dainty little cottages,
runs by the bank up to the "Bells of Ouseley," a picturesque inn, as most
up- river inns are, and a place where a very good glass of ale may be drunk
- so Harris says; and on a matter of this kind you can take Harris's word.
Old Windsor is a famous spot in its way. Edward the Confessor had a palace
here, and here the great Earl Godwin was proved guilty by the justice of
that age of having encompassed the death of the King's brother. Earl Godwin
broke a piece of bread and held it in his hand.
"If I am guilty," said the Earl, "may this bread choke me
when I eat it!"
Then he put the bread into his mouth and swallowed it, and
it choked him, and he died.
After you pass Old Windsor, the river is somewhat
uninteresting, and does not become itself again until you are nearing
Boveney. George and I towed up past the Home Park, which stretches along the
right bank from Albert to Victoria Bridge; and as we were passing Datchet,
George asked me if I remembered our first trip up the river, and when we
landed at Datchet at ten o'clock at night, and wanted to go to bed.
I answered that I did remember it. It will be some time
before I forget it.
It was the Saturday before the August Bank Holiday. We were
tired and hungry, we same three, and when we got to Datchet we took out the
hamper, the two bags, and the rugs and coats, and such like things, and
started off to look for diggings. We passed a very pretty little hotel, with
clematis and creeper over the porch; but there was no honeysuckle about it,
and, for some reason or other, I had got my mind fixed on honeysuckle, and I
said:
"Oh, don't let's go in there! Let's go on a bit further, and
see if there isn't one with honeysuckle over it."
So we went on till we came to another hotel. That was a very
nice hotel, too, and it had honey-suckle on it, round at the side; but
Harris did not like the look of a man who was leaning against the front
door. He said he didn't look a nice man at all, and he wore ugly boots: so
we went on further. We went a goodish way without coming across any more
hotels, and then we met a man, and asked him to direct us to a few.
He said:
"Why, you are coming away from them. You must turn right
round and go back, and then you will come to the Stag."
We said:
"Oh, we had been there, and didn't like it - no honeysuckle
over it."
"Well, then," he said, "there's the Manor House, just
opposite. Have you tried that?"
Harris replied that we did not want to go there - didn't
like the looks of a man who was stopping there - Harris did not like the
colour of his hair, didn't like his boots, either.
"Well, I don't know what you'll do, I'm sure," said our
informant; "because they are the only two inns in the place."
"No other inns!" exclaimed Harris.
"None," replied the man.
"What on earth are we to do?" cried Harris.
Then George spoke up. He said Harris and I could get an
hotel built for us, if we liked, and have some people made to put in. For
his part, he was going back to the Stag.
The greatest minds never realise their ideals in any matter;
and Harris and I sighed over the hollowness of all earthly desires, and
followed George.
We took our traps into the Stag, and laid them down in the
hall.
The landlord came up and said:
"Good evening, gentlemen."
"Oh, good evening," said George; "we want three beds,
please."
"Very sorry, sir," said the landlord; "but I'm afraid we
can't manage it."
"Oh, well, never mind," said George, "two will do. Two of us
can sleep in one bed, can't we?" he continued, turning to Harris and me.
Harris said, "Oh, yes;" he thought George and I could sleep
in one bed very easily.
"Very sorry, sir," again repeated the landlord: "but we
really haven't got a bed vacant in the whole house. In fact, we are putting
two, and even three gentlemen in one bed, as it is."
This staggered us for a bit.
But Harris, who is an old traveller, rose to the occasion,
and, laughing cheerily, said:
"Oh, well, we can't help it. We must rough it. You must give
us a shake-down in the billiard-room."
"Very sorry, sir. Three gentlemen sleeping on the
billiard-table already, and two in the coffee-room. Can't possibly take you
in to- night."
We picked up our things, and went over to the Manor House.
It was a pretty little place. I said I thought I should like it better than
the other house; and Harris said, "Oh, yes," it would be all right, and we
needn't look at the man with the red hair; besides, the poor fellow couldn't
help having red hair.
Harris spoke quite kindly and sensibly about it.
The people at the Manor House did not wait to hear us talk.
The landlady met us on the doorstep with the greeting that we were the
fourteenth party she had turned away within the last hour and a half. As for
our meek suggestions of stables, billiard-room, or coal-cellars, she laughed
them all to scorn: all these nooks had been snatched up long ago.
Did she know of any place in the whole village where we
could get shelter for the night?
"Well, if we didn't mind roughing it - she did not recommend
it, mind - but there was a little beershop half a mile down the Eton road -
"
We waited to hear no more; we caught up the hamper and the
bags, and the coats and rugs, and parcels, and ran. The distance seemed more
like a mile than half a mile, but we reached the place at last, and rushed,
panting, into the bar.
The people at the beershop were rude. They merely laughed at
us. There were only three beds in the whole house, and they had seven single
gentlemen and two married couples sleeping there already. A kind-hearted
bargeman, however, who happened to be in the tap-room, thought we might try
the grocer's, next door to the Stag, and we went back.
The grocer's was full. An old woman we met in the shop then
kindly took us along with her for a quarter of a mile, to a lady friend of
hers, who occasionally let rooms to gentlemen.
This old woman walked very slowly, and we were twenty
minutes getting to her lady friend's. She enlivened the journey by
describing to us, as we trailed along, the various pains she had in her
back.
Her lady friend's rooms were let. From there we were
recommended to No. 27. No. 27 was full, and sent us to No. 32, and 32 was
full.
Then we went back into the high road, and Harris sat down on
the hamper and said he would go no further. He said it seemed a quiet spot,
and he would like to die there. He requested George and me to kiss his
mother for him, and to tell all his relations that he forgave them and died
happy.
At that moment an angel came by in the disguise of a small
boy (and I cannot think of any more effective disguise an angel could have
assumed), with a can of beer in one hand, and in the other something at the
end of a string, which he let down on to every flat stone he came across,
and then pulled up again, this producing a peculiarly unattractive sound,
suggestive of suffering.
We asked this heavenly messenger (as we discovered him
afterwards to be) if he knew of any lonely house, whose occupants were few
and feeble (old ladies or paralysed gentlemen preferred), who could be
easily frightened into giving up their beds for the night to three desperate
men; or, if not this, could he recommend us to an empty pigstye, or a
disused limekiln, or anything of that sort. He did not know of any such
place - at least, not one handy; but he said that, if we liked to come with
him, his mother had a room to spare, and could put us up for the night.
We fell upon his neck there in the moonlight and blessed
him, and it would have made a very beautiful picture if the boy himself had
not been so over-powered by our emotion as to be unable to sustain himself
under it, and sunk to the ground, letting us all down on top of him. Harris
was so overcome with joy that he fainted, and had to seize the boy's
beer-can and half empty it before he could recover consciousness, and then
he started off at a run, and left George and me to bring on the luggage.
It was a little four-roomed cottage where the boy lived, and
his mother - good soul! - gave us hot bacon for supper, and we ate it all -
five pounds - and a jam tart afterwards, and two pots of tea, and then we
went to bed. There were two beds in the room; one was a 2ft. 6in. truckle
bed, and George and I slept in that, and kept in by tying ourselves together
with a sheet; and the other was the little boy's bed, and Harris had that
all to himself, and we found him, in the morning, with two feet of bare leg
sticking out at the bottom, and George and I used it to hang the towels on
while we bathed.
We were not so uppish about what sort of hotel we would
have, next time we went to Datchet.
To return to our present trip: nothing exciting happened,
and we tugged steadily on to a little below Monkey Island, where we drew up
and lunched. We tackled the cold beef for lunch, and then we found that we
had forgotten to bring any mustard. I don't think I ever in my life, before
or since, felt I wanted mustard as badly as I felt I wanted it then. I don't
care for mustard as a rule, and it is very seldom that I take it at all, but
I would have given worlds for it then.
I don't know how many worlds there may be in the universe,
but anyone who had brought me a spoonful of mustard at that precise moment
could have had them all. I grow reckless like that when I want a thing and
can't get it.
Harris said he would have given worlds for mustard too. It
would have been a good thing for anybody who had come up to that spot with a
can of mustard, then: he would have been set up in worlds for the rest of
his life.
But there! I daresay both Harris and I would have tried to
back out of the bargain after we had got the mustard. One makes these
extravagant offers in moments of excitement, but, of course, when one comes
to think of it, one sees how absurdly out of proportion they are with the
value of the required article. I heard a man, going up a mountain in
Switzerland, once say he would give worlds for a glass of beer, and, when he
came to a little shanty where they kept it, he kicked up a most fearful row
because they charged him five francs for a bottle of Bass. He said it was a
scandalous imposition, and he wrote to the TIMES about it.
It cast a gloom over the boat, there being no mustard. We
ate our beef in silence. Existence seemed hollow and uninteresting. We
thought of the happy days of childhood, and sighed. We brightened up a bit,
however, over the apple-tart, and, when George drew out a tin of pine- apple
from the bottom of the hamper, and rolled it into the middle of the boat, we
felt that life was worth living after all.
We are very fond of pine-apple, all three of us. We looked
at the picture on the tin; we thought of the juice. We smiled at one
another, and Harris got a spoon ready.
Then we looked for the knife to open the tin with. We turned
out everything in the hamper. We turned out the bags. We pulled up the
boards at the bottom of the boat. We took everything out on to the bank and
shook it. There was no tin-opener to be found.
Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and
broke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of scissors,
and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye out. While they were
dressing their wounds, I tried to make a hole in the thing with the spiky
end of the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the
boat and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over,
uninjured, and broke a teacup.
Then we all got mad. We took that tin out on the bank, and
Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I went back into
the boat and brought out the mast, and George held the tin and Harris held
the sharp end of his stone against the top of it, and I took the mast and
poised it high up in the air, and gathered up all my strength and brought it
down.
It was George's straw hat that saved his life that day. He
keeps that hat now (what is left of it), and, of a winter's evening, when
the pipes are lit and the boys are telling stretchers about the dangers they
have passed through, George brings it down and shows it round, and the
stirring tale is told anew, with fresh exaggerations every time.
Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.
After that, I took the tin off myself, and hammered at it
with the mast till I was worn out and sick at heart, whereupon Harris took
it in hand.
We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered it
into every form known to geometry - but we could not make a hole in it. Then
George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so
unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away the
mast. Then we all three sat round it on the grass and looked at it.
There was one great dent across the top that had the
appearance of a mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so that Harris rushed
at the thing, and caught it up, and flung it far into the middle of the
river, and as it sank we hurled our curses at it, and we got into the boat
and rowed away from the spot, and never paused till we reached Maidenhead.
Maidenhead itself is too snobby to be pleasant. It is the
haunt of the river swell and his overdressed female companion. It is the
town of showy hotels, patronised chiefly by dudes and ballet girls. It is
the witch's kitchen from which go forth those demons of the river - steam-
launches. The LONDON JOURNAL duke always has his "little place" at
Maidenhead; and the heroine of the three-volume novel always dines there
when she goes out on the spree with somebody else's husband.
We went through Maidenhead quickly, and then eased up, and
took leisurely that grand reach beyond Boulter's and Cookham locks.
Clieveden Woods still wore their dainty dress of spring, and rose up, from
the water's edge, in one long harmony of blended shades of fairy green. In
its unbroken loveliness this is, perhaps, the sweetest stretch of all the
river, and lingeringly we slowly drew our little boat away from its deep
peace.
We pulled up in the backwater, just below Cookham, and had
tea; and, when we were through the lock, it was evening. A stiffish breeze
had sprung up - in our favour, for a wonder; for, as a rule on the river,
the wind is always dead against you whatever way you go. It is against you
in the morning, when you start for a day's trip, and you pull a long
distance, thinking how easy it will be to come back with the sail. Then,
after tea, the wind veers round, and you have to pull hard in its teeth all
the way home.
When you forget to take the sail at all, then the wind is
consistently in your favour both ways. But there! this world is only a
probation, and man was born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.
This evening, however, they had evidently made a mistake,
and had put the wind round at our back instead of in our face. We kept very
quiet about it, and got the sail up quickly before they found it out, and
then we spread ourselves about the boat in thoughtful attitudes, and the
sail bellied out, and strained, and grumbled at the mast, and the boat flew.
I steered.
There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing.
It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet - except in dreams. The
wings of the rushing wind seem to be bearing you onward, you know not where.
You are no longer the slow, plodding, puny thing of clay, creeping
tortuously upon the ground; you are a part of Nature! Your heart is
throbbing against hers! Her glorious arms are round you, raising you up
against her heart! Your spirit is at one with hers; your limbs grow light!
The voices of the air are singing to you. The earth seems far away and
little; and the clouds, so close above your head, are brothers, and you
stretch your arms to them.
We had the river to ourselves, except that, far in the
distance, we could see a fishing-punt, moored in mid-stream, on which three
fishermen sat; and we skimmed over the water, and passed the wooded banks,
and no one spoke.
I was steering.
As we drew nearer, we could see that the three men fishing
seemed old and solemn-looking men. They sat on three chairs in the punt, and
watched intently their lines. And the red sunset threw a mystic light upon
the waters, and tinged with fire the towering woods, and made a golden glory
of the piled-up clouds. It was an hour of deep enchantment, of ecstatic hope
and longing. The little sail stood out against the purple sky, the gloaming
lay around us, wrapping the world in rainbow shadows; and, behind us, crept
the night.
We seemed like knights of some old legend, sailing across
some mystic lake into the unknown realm of twilight, unto the great land of
the sunset.
We did not go into the realm of twilight; we went slap into
that punt, where those three old men were fishing. We did not know what had
happened at first, because the sail shut out the view, but from the nature
of the language that rose up upon the evening air, we gathered that we had
come into the neighbourhood of human beings, and that they were vexed and
discontented.
Harris let the sail down, and then we saw what had happened.
We had knocked those three old gentlemen off their chairs into a general
heap at the bottom of the boat, and they were now slowly and painfully
sorting themselves out from each other, and picking fish off themselves; and
as they worked, they cursed us - not with a common cursory curse, but with
long, carefully-thought-out, comprehensive curses, that embraced the whole
of our career, and went away into the distant future, and included all our
relations, and covered everything connected with us - good, substantial
curses.
Harris told them they ought to be grateful for a little
excitement, sitting there fishing all day, and he also said that he was
shocked and grieved to hear men their age give way to temper so.
But it did not do any good.
George said he would steer, after that. He said a mind like
mine ought not to be expected to give itself away in steering boats - better
let a mere commonplace human being see after that boat, before we jolly well
all got drowned; and he took the lines, and brought us up to Marlow.
And at Marlow we left the boat by the bridge, and went and
put up for the night at the "Crown."
CHAPTER XIII.
MARLOW. - BISHAM ABBEY. - THE
MEDMENHAM MONKS. - MONTMORENCY THINKS HE WILL MURDER AN OLD TOM CAT. - BUT
EVENTUALLY DECIDES THAT HE WILL LET IT LIVE. - SHAMEFUL CONDUCT OF A FOX
TERRIER AT THE CIVIL SERVICE STORES. - OUR DEPARTURE FROM MARLOW. - AN
IMPOSING PROCESSION. - THE STEAM LAUNCH, USEFUL RECEIPTS FOR ANNOYING AND
HINDERING IT. - WE DECLINE TO DRINK THE RIVER. - A PEACEFUL DOG. - STRANGE
DISAPPEARANCE OF HARRIS AND A PIE.
MARLOW is one of the pleasantest river centres I know of. It
is a bustling, lively little town; not very picturesque on the whole, it is
true, but there are many quaint nooks and corners to be found in it,
nevertheless - standing arches in the shattered bridge of Time, over which
our fancy travels back to the days when Marlow Manor owned Saxon Algar for
its lord, ere conquering William seized it to give to Queen Matilda, ere it
passed to the Earls of Warwick or to worldly-wise Lord Paget, the councillor
of four successive sovereigns.
There is lovely country round about it, too, if, after
boating, you are fond of a walk, while the river itself is at its best here.
Down to Cookham, past the Quarry Woods and the meadows, is a lovely reach.
Dear old Quarry Woods! with your narrow, climbing paths, and little winding
glades, how scented to this hour you seem with memories of sunny summer
days! How haunted are your shadowy vistas with the ghosts of laughing faces!
how from your whispering leaves there softly fall the voices of long ago!
From Marlow up to Sonning is even fairer yet. Grand old
Bisham Abbey, whose stone walls have rung to the shouts of the Knights
Templars, and which, at one time, was the home of Anne of Cleves and at
another of Queen Elizabeth, is passed on the right bank just half a mile
above Marlow Bridge. Bisham Abbey is rich in melodramatic properties. It
contains a tapestry bed-chamber, and a secret room hid high up in the thick
walls. The ghost of the Lady Holy, who beat her little boy to death, still
walks there at night, trying to wash its ghostly hands clean in a ghostly
basin.
Warwick, the king-maker, rests there, careless now about
such trivial things as earthly kings and earthly kingdoms; and Salisbury,
who did good service at Poitiers. Just before you come to the abbey, and
right on the river's bank, is Bisham Church, and, perhaps, if any tombs are
worth inspecting, they are the tombs and monuments in Bisham Church. It was
while floating in his boat under the Bisham beeches that Shelley, who was
then living at Marlow (you can see his house now, in West street), composed
THE REVOLT OF ISLAM.
By Hurley Weir, a little higher up, I have often thought
that I could stay a month without having sufficient time to drink in all the
beauty of the scene. The village of Hurley, five minutes' walk from the
lock, is as old a little spot as there is on the river, dating, as it does,
to quote the quaint phraseology of those dim days, "from the times of King
Sebert and King Offa." Just past the weir (going up) is Danes' Field, where
the invading Danes once encamped, during their march to Gloucestershire; and
a little further still, nestling by a sweet corner of the stream, is what is
left of Medmenham Abbey.
The famous Medmenham monks, or "Hell Fire Club," as they
were commonly called, and of whom the notorious Wilkes was a member, were a
fraternity whose motto was "Do as you please," and that invitation still
stands over the ruined doorway of the abbey. Many years before this bogus
abbey, with its congregation of irreverent jesters, was founded, there stood
upon this same spot a monastery of a sterner kind, whose monks were of a
somewhat different type to the revellers that were to follow them, five
hundred years afterwards.
The Cistercian monks, whose abbey stood there in the
thirteenth century, wore no clothes but rough tunics and cowls, and ate no
flesh, nor fish, nor eggs. They lay upon straw, and they rose at midnight to
mass. They spent the day in labour, reading, and prayer; and over all their
lives there fell a silence as of death, for no one spoke.
A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot,
that God had made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them -
the soft singing of the waters, the whisperings of the river grass, the
music of the rushing wind - should not have taught them a truer meaning of
life than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence,
waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn
night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.
From Medmenham to sweet Hambledon Lock the river is full of
peaceful beauty, but, after it passes Greenlands, the rather uninteresting
looking river residence of my newsagent - a quiet unassuming old gentleman,
who may often be met with about these regions, during the summer months,
sculling himself along in easy vigorous style, or chatting genially to some
old lock-keeper, as he passes through - until well the other side of Henley,
it is somewhat bare and dull.
We got up tolerably early on the Monday morning at Marlow,
and went for a bathe before breakfast; and, coming back, Montmorency made an
awful ass of himself. The only subject on which Montmorency and I have any
serious difference of opinion is cats. I like cats; Montmorency does not.
When I meet a cat, I say, "Poor Pussy!" and stop down and
tickle the side of its head; and the cat sticks up its tail in a rigid,
cast-iron manner, arches its back, and wipes its nose up against my
trousers; and all is gentleness and peace. When Montmorency meets a cat, the
whole street knows about it; and there is enough bad language wasted in ten
seconds to last an ordinarily respectable man all his life, with care.
I do not blame the dog (contenting myself, as a rule, with
merely clouting his head or throwing stones at him), because I take it that
it is his nature. Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much
original sin in them as other dogs are, and it will take years and years of
patient effort on the part of us Christians to bring about any appreciable
reformation in the rowdiness of the fox-terrier nature.
I remember being in the lobby of the Haymarket Stores one
day, and all round about me were dogs, waiting for the return of their
owners, who were shopping inside. There were a mastiff, and one or two
collies, and a St. Bernard, a few retrievers and Newfoundlands, a
boar-hound, a French poodle, with plenty of hair round its head, but mangy
about the middle; a bull-dog, a few Lowther Arcade sort of animals, about
the size of rats, and a couple of Yorkshire tykes.
There they sat, patient, good, and thoughtful. A solemn
peacefulness seemed to reign in that lobby. An air of calmness and
resignation - of gentle sadness pervaded the room.
Then a sweet young lady entered, leading a meek-looking
little fox- terrier, and left him, chained up there, between the bull-dog
and the poodle. He sat and looked about him for a minute. Then he cast up
his eyes to the ceiling, and seemed, judging from his expression, to be
thinking of his mother. Then he yawned. Then he looked round at the other
dogs, all silent, grave, and dignified.
He looked at the bull-dog, sleeping dreamlessly on his
right. He looked at the poodle, erect and haughty, on his left. Then,
without a word of warning, without the shadow of a provocation, he bit that
poodle's near fore-leg, and a yelp of agony rang through the quiet shades of
that lobby.
The result of his first experiment seemed highly
satisfactory to him, and he determined to go on and make things lively all
round. He sprang over the poodle and vigorously attacked a collie, and the
collie woke up, and immediately commenced a fierce and noisy contest with
the poodle. Then Foxey came back to his own place, and caught the bull-dog
by the ear, and tried to throw him away; and the bull-dog, a curiously
impartial animal, went for everything he could reach, including the
hall-porter, which gave that dear little terrier the opportunity to enjoy an
uninterrupted fight of his own with an equally willing Yorkshire tyke.
Anyone who knows canine nature need hardly, be told that, by
this time, all the other dogs in the place were fighting as if their hearths
and homes depended on the fray. The big dogs fought each other
indiscriminately; and the little dogs fought among themselves, and filled up
their spare time by biting the legs of the big dogs.
The whole lobby was a perfect pandemonium, and the din was
terrific. A crowd assembled outside in the Haymarket, and asked if it was a
vestry meeting; or, if not, who was being murdered, and why? Men came with
poles and ropes, and tried to separate the dogs, and the police were sent
for.
And in the midst of the riot that sweet young lady returned,
and snatched up that sweet little dog of hers (he had laid the tyke up for a
month, and had on the expression, now, of a new-born lamb) into her arms,
and kissed him, and asked him if he was killed, and what those great nasty
brutes of dogs had been doing to him; and he nestled up against her, and
gazed up into her face with a look that seemed to say: "Oh, I'm so glad
you've come to take me away from this disgraceful scene!"
She said that the people at the Stores had no right to allow
great savage things like those other dogs to be put with respectable
people's dogs, and that she had a great mind to summon somebody.
Such is the nature of fox-terriers; and, therefore, I do not
blame Montmorency for his tendency to row with cats; but he wished he had
not given way to it that morning.
We were, as I have said, returning from a dip, and half-way
up the High Street a cat darted out from one of the houses in front of us,
and began to trot across the road. Montmorency gave a cry of joy - the cry
of a stern warrior who sees his enemy given over to his hands - the sort of
cry Cromwell might have uttered when the Scots came down the hill - and flew
after his prey.
His victim was a large black Tom. I never saw a larger cat,
nor a more disreputable-looking cat. It had lost half its tail, one of its
ears, and a fairly appreciable proportion of its nose. It was a long,
sinewy- looking animal. It had a calm, contented air about it.
Montmorency went for that poor cat at the rate of twenty
miles an hour; but the cat did not hurry up - did not seem to have grasped
the idea that its life was in danger. It trotted quietly on until its
would-be assassin was within a yard of it, and then it turned round and sat
down in the middle of the road, and looked at Montmorency with a gentle,
inquiring expression, that said:
"Yes! You want me?"
Montmorency does not lack pluck; but there was something
about the look of that cat that might have chilled the heart of the boldest
dog. He stopped abruptly, and looked back at Tom.
Neither spoke; but the conversation that one could imagine
was clearly as follows:-
THE CAT: "Can I do anything for you?"
MONTMORENCY: "No - no, thanks."
THE CAT: "Don't you mind speaking, if you really want
anything, you know."
MONTMORENCY (BACKING DOWN THE HIGH STREET): "Oh, no - not at
all - certainly - don't you trouble. I - I am afraid I've made a mistake. I
thought I knew you. Sorry I disturbed you."
THE CAT: "Not at all - quite a pleasure. Sure you don't want
anything, now?"
MONTMORENCY (STILL BACKING): "Not at all, thanks - not at
all - very kind of you. Good morning."
THE CAT: "Good-morning."
Then the cat rose, and continued his trot; and Montmorency,
fitting what he calls his tail carefully into its groove, came back to us,
and took up an unimportant position in the rear.
To this day, if you say the word "Cats!" to Montmorency, he
will visibly shrink and look up piteously at you, as if to say:
"Please don't."
We did our marketing after breakfast, and revictualled the
boat for three days. George said we ought to take vegetables - that it was
unhealthy not to eat vegetables. He said they were easy enough to cook, and
that he would see to that; so we got ten pounds of potatoes, a bushel of
peas, and a few cabbages. We got a beefsteak pie, a couple of gooseberry
tarts, and a leg of mutton from the hotel; and fruit, and cakes, and bread
and butter, and jam, and bacon and eggs, and other things we foraged round
about the town for.
Our departure from Marlow I regard as one of our greatest
successes. It was dignified and impressive, without being ostentatious. We
had insisted at all the shops we had been to that the things should be sent
with us then and there. None of your "Yes, sir, I will send them off at
once: the boy will be down there before you are, sir!" and then fooling
about on the landing-stage, and going back to the shop twice to have a row
about them, for us. We waited while the basket was packed, and took the boy
with us.
We went to a good many shops, adopting this principle at
each one; and the consequence was that, by the time we had finished, we had
as fine a collection of boys with baskets following us around as heart could
desire; and our final march down the middle of the High Street, to the
river, must have been as imposing a spectacle as Marlow had seen for many a
long day.
The order of the procession was as follows:-
Montmorency, carrying a stick.
Two disreputable-looking curs, friends of Montmorency's.
George, carrying coats and rugs, and smoking a short pipe.
Harris, trying to walk with easy grace,
while carrying a bulged-out Gladstone bag in one hand
and a bottle of lime-juice in the other.
Greengrocer's boy and baker's boy,
with baskets.
Boots from the hotel, carrying hamper.
Confectioner's boy, with basket.
Grocer's boy, with basket.
Long-haired dog.
Cheesemonger's boy, with basket.
Odd man carrying a bag.
Bosom companion of odd man, with his hands in his pockets,
smoking a short clay.
Fruiterer's boy, with basket.
Myself, carrying three hats and a pair of boots,
and trying to look as if I didn't know it.
Six small boys, and four stray dogs.
When we got down to the
landing-stage, the boatman said:
"Let me see, sir; was yours a steam-launch or a house-boat?"
On our informing him it was a double-sculling skiff, he
seemed surprised.
We had a good deal of trouble with steam launches that
morning. It was just before the Henley week, and they were going up in large
numbers; some by themselves, some towing houseboats. I do hate steam
launches: I suppose every rowing man does. I never see a steam launch but I
feel I should like to lure it to a lonely part of the river, and there, in
the silence and the solitude, strangle it.
There is a blatant bumptiousness about a steam launch that
has the knack of rousing every evil instinct in my nature, and I yearn for
the good old days, when you could go about and tell people what you thought
of them with a hatchet and a bow and arrows. The expression on the face of
the man who, with his hands in his pockets, stands by the stern, smoking a
cigar, is sufficient to excuse a breach of the peace by itself; and the
lordly whistle for you to get out of the way would, I am confident, ensure a
verdict of "justifiable homicide" from any jury of river men.
They used to HAVE to whistle for us to get out of their way.
If I may do so, without appearing boastful, I think I can honestly say that
our one small boat, during that week, caused more annoyance and delay and
aggravation to the steam launches that we came across than all the other
craft on the river put together.
"Steam launch, coming!" one of us would cry out, on sighting
the enemy in the distance; and, in an instant, everything was got ready to
receive her. I would take the lines, and Harris and George would sit down
beside me, all of us with our backs to the launch, and the boat would drift
out quietly into mid-stream.
On would come the launch, whistling, and on we would go,
drifting. At about a hundred yards off, she would start whistling like mad,
and the people would come and lean over the side, and roar at us; but we
never heard them! Harris would be telling us an anecdote about his mother,
and George and I would not have missed a word of it for worlds.
Then that launch would give one final shriek of a whistle
that would nearly burst the boiler, and she would reverse her engines, and
blow off steam, and swing round and get aground; everyone on board of it
would rush to the bow and yell at us, and the people on the bank would stand
and shout to us, and all the other passing boats would stop and join in,
till the whole river for miles up and down was in a state of frantic
commotion. And then Harris would break off in the most interesting part of
his narrative, and look up with mild surprise, and say to George:
"Why, George, bless me, if here isn't a steam launch!"
And George would answer:
"Well, do you know, I THOUGHT I heard something!"
Upon which we would get nervous and confused, and not know
how to get the boat out of the way, and the people in the launch would crowd
round and instruct us:
"Pull your right - you, you idiot! back with your left. No,
not YOU - the other one - leave the lines alone, can't you - now, both
together. NOT THAT way. Oh, you - !"
Then they would lower a boat and come to our assistance;
and, after quarter of an hour's effort, would get us clean out of their way,
so that they could go on; and we would thank them so much, and ask them to
give us a tow. But they never would.
Another good way we discovered of irritating the
aristocratic type of steam launch, was to mistake them for a beanfeast, and
ask them if they were Messrs. Cubit's lot or the Bermondsey Good Templars,
and could they lend us a saucepan.
Old ladies, not accustomed to the river, are always
intensely nervous of steam launches. I remember going up once from Staines
to Windsor - a stretch of water peculiarly rich in these mechanical
monstrosities - with a party containing three ladies of this description. It
was very exciting. At the first glimpse of every steam launch that came in
view, they insisted on landing and sitting down on the bank until it was out
of sight again. They said they were very sorry, but that they owed it to
their families not to be fool-hardy.
We found ourselves short of water at Hambledon Lock; so we
took our jar and went up to the lock-keeper's house to beg for some.
George was our spokesman. He put on a winning smile, and
said:
"Oh, please could you spare us a little water?"
"Certainly," replied the old gentleman; "take as much as you
want, and leave the rest."
"Thank you so much," murmured George, looking about him.
"Where - where do you keep it?"
"It's always in the same place my boy," was the stolid
reply: "just behind you."
"I don't see it," said George, turning round.
"Why, bless us, where's your eyes?" was the man's comment,
as he twisted George round and pointed up and down the stream. "There's
enough of it to see, ain't there?"
"Oh!" exclaimed George, grasping the idea; "but we can't
drink the river, you know!"
"No; but you can drink SOME of it," replied the old fellow.
"It's what
I've drunk for the last fifteen years."
George told him that his appearance, after the course, did
not seem a sufficiently good advertisement for the brand; and that he would
prefer it out of a pump.
We got some from a cottage a little higher up. I daresay
THAT was only river water, if we had known. But we did not know, so it was
all right. What the eye does not see, the stomach does not get upset over.
We tried river water once, later on in the season, but it
was not a success. We were coming down stream, and had pulled up to have tea
in a backwater near Windsor. Our jar was empty, and it was a case of going
without our tea or taking water from the river. Harris was for chancing it.
He said it must be all right if we boiled the water. He said that the
various germs of poison present in the water would be killed by the boiling.
So we filled our kettle with Thames backwater, and boiled it; and very
careful we were to see that it did boil.
We had made the tea, and were just settling down comfortably
to drink it, when George, with his cup half-way to his lips, paused and
exclaimed:
"What's that?"
"What's what?" asked Harris and I.
"Why that!" said George, looking westward.
Harris and I followed his gaze, and saw, coming down towards
us on the sluggish current, a dog. It was one of the quietest and
peacefullest dogs I have ever seen. I never met a dog who seemed more
contented - more easy in its mind. It was floating dreamily on its back,
with its four legs stuck up straight into the air. It was what I should call
a full-bodied dog, with a well-developed chest. On he came, serene,
dignified, and calm, until he was abreast of our boat, and there, among the
rushes, he eased up, and settled down cosily for the evening.
George said he didn't want any tea, and emptied his cup into
the water. Harris did not feel thirsty, either, and followed suit. I had
drunk half mine, but I wished I had not.
I asked George if he thought I was likely to have typhoid.
He said: "Oh, no;" he thought I had a very good chance
indeed of escaping it. Anyhow, I should know in about a fortnight, whether I
had or had not.
We went up the backwater to Wargrave. It is a short cut,
leading out of the right-hand bank about half a mile above Marsh Lock, and
is well worth taking, being a pretty, shady little piece of stream, besides
saving nearly half a mile of distance.
Of course, its entrance is studded with posts and chains,
and surrounded with notice boards, menacing all kinds of torture,
imprisonment, and death to everyone who dares set scull upon its waters - I
wonder some of these riparian boors don't claim the air of the river and
threaten everyone with forty shillings fine who breathes it - but the posts
and chains a little skill will easily avoid; and as for the boards, you
might, if you have five minutes to spare, and there is nobody about, take
one or two of them down and throw them into the river.
Half-way up the backwater, we got out and lunched; and it
was during this lunch that George and I received rather a trying shock.
Harris received a shock, too; but I do not think Harris's
shock could have been anything like so bad as the shock that George and I
had over the business.
You see, it was in this way: we were sitting in a meadow,
about ten yards
from the water's edge, and we had just settled down comfortably to feed.
Harris had the beefsteak pie between his knees, and was carving it, and
George and I were waiting with our plates ready.
"Have you got a spoon there?" says Harris; "I want a spoon
to help the gravy with."
The hamper was close behind us, and George and I both turned
round to reach one out. We were not five seconds getting it. When we looked
round again, Harris and the pie were gone!
It was a wide, open field. There was not a tree or a bit of
hedge for hundreds of yards. He could not have tumbled into the river,
because we were on the water side of him, and he would have had to climb
over us to do it.
George and I gazed all about. Then we gazed at each other.
"Has he been snatched up to heaven?" I queried.
"They'd hardly have taken the pie too," said George.
There seemed weight in this objection, and we discarded the
heavenly theory.
"I suppose the truth of the matter is," suggested George,
descending to the commonplace and practicable, "that there has been an
earthquake."
And then he added, with a touch of sadness in his voice: "I
wish he hadn't been carving that pie."
With a sigh, we turned our eyes once more towards the spot
where Harris and the pie had last been seen on earth; and there, as our
blood froze in our veins and our hair stood up on end, we saw Harris's head
- and nothing but his head - sticking bolt upright among the tall grass, the
face very red, and bearing upon it an expression of great indignation!
George was the first to recover.
"Speak!" he cried, "and tell us whether you are alive or
dead - and where is the rest of you?"
"Oh, don't be a stupid ass!" said Harris's head. "I believe
you did it on purpose."
"Did what?" exclaimed George and I.
" Why, put me to sit here - darn silly trick! Here, catch
hold of the pie."
And out of the middle of the earth, as it seemed to us, rose
the pie - very much mixed up and damaged; and, after it, scrambled Harris -
tumbled, grubby, and wet.
He had been sitting, without knowing it, on the very verge
of a small gully, the long grass hiding it from view; and in leaning a
little back he had shot over, pie and all.
He said he had never felt so surprised in all his life, as
when he first felt himself going, without being able to conjecture in the
slightest what had happened. He thought at first that the end of the world
had come.
Harris believes to this day that George and I planned it all
beforehand. Thus does unjust suspicion follow even the most blameless for,
as the poet says, "Who shall escape calumny?"
Who, indeed!
CHAPTER XIV.
WARGRAVE. - WAXWORKS. - SONNING. -
OUR STEW. - MONTMORENCY IS SARCASTIC. - FIGHT BETWEEN MONTMORENCY AND THE
TEA-KETTLE. - GEORGE'S BANJO STUDIES. - MEET WITH DISCOURAGEMENT. -
DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF THE MUSICAL AMATEUR. - LEARNING TO PLAY THE
BAGPIPES. - HARRIS FEELS SAD AFTER SUPPER. - GEORGE AND I GO FOR A WALK. -
RETURN HUNGRY AND WET. - THERE IS A STRANGENESS ABOUT HARRIS. - HARRIS AND
THE SWANS, A REMARKABLE STORY. - HARRIS HAS A TROUBLED NIGHT.
WE caught a breeze, after lunch, which took us gently up
past Wargrave and Shiplake. Mellowed in the drowsy sunlight of a summer's
afternoon, Wargrave, nestling where the river bends, makes a sweet old
picture as you pass it, and one that lingers long upon the retina of memory.
The "George and Dragon" at Wargrave boasts a sign, painted
on the one side by Leslie, R.A., and on the other by Hodgson of that ilk.
Leslie has depicted the fight; Hodgson has imagined the scene, "After the
Fight" - George, the work done, enjoying his pint of beer.
Day, the author of SANDFORD AND MERTON, lived and - more
credit to the place still - was killed at Wargrave. In the church is a
memorial to Mrs. Sarah Hill, who bequeathed 1 pound annually, to be divided
at Easter, between two boys and two girls who "have never been undutiful to
their parents; who have never been known to swear or to tell untruths, to
steal, or to break windows." Fancy giving up all that for five shillings a
year! It is not worth it.
It is rumoured in the town that once, many years ago, a boy
appeared who really never had done these things - or at all events, which
was all that was required or could be expected, had never been known to do
them - and thus won the crown of glory. He was exhibited for three weeks
afterwards in the Town Hall, under a glass case.
What has become of the money since no one knows. They say it
is always handed over to the nearest wax-works show.
Shiplake is a pretty village, but it cannot be seen from the
river, being upon the hill. Tennyson was married in Shiplake Church.
The river up to Sonning winds in and out through many
islands, and is very placid, hushed, and lonely. Few folk, except at
twilight, a pair or two of rustic lovers, walk along its banks. `Arry and
Lord Fitznoodle have been left behind at Henley, and dismal, dirty Reading
is not yet reached. It is a part of the river in which to dream of bygone
days, and vanished forms and faces, and things that might have been, but are
not, confound them.
We got out at Sonning, and went for a walk round the
village. It is the most fairy-like little nook on the whole river. It is
more like a stage village than one built of bricks and mortar. Every house
is smothered in roses, and now, in early June, they were bursting forth in
clouds of dainty splendour. If you stop at Sonning, put up at the "Bull,"
behind the church. It is a veritable picture of an old country inn, with
green, square courtyard in front, where, on seats beneath the trees, the old
men group of an evening to drink their ale and gossip over village politics;
with low, quaint rooms and latticed windows, and awkward stairs and winding
passages.
We roamed about sweet Sonning for an hour or so, and then,
it being too late to push on past Reading, we decided to go back to one of
the Shiplake islands, and put up there for the night. It was still early
when we got settled, and George said that, as we had plenty of time, it
would be a splendid opportunity to try a good, slap-up supper. He said he
would show us what could be done up the river in the way of cooking, and
suggested that, with the vegetables and the remains of the cold beef and
general odds and ends, we should make an Irish stew.
It seemed a fascinating idea. George gathered wood and made
a fire, and Harris and I started to peel the potatoes. I should never have
thought that peeling potatoes was such an undertaking. The job turned out to
be the biggest thing of its kind that I had ever been in. We began
cheerfully, one might almost say skittishly, but our light-heartedness was
gone by the time the first potato was finished. The more we peeled, the more
peel there seemed to be left on; by the time we had got all the peel off and
all the eyes out, there was no potato left - at least none worth speaking
of. George came and had a look at it - it was about the size of a pea-nut.
He said:
"Oh, that won't do! You're wasting them. You must scrape
them."
So we scraped them, and that was harder work than peeling.
They are such an extraordinary shape, potatoes - all bumps and warts and
hollows. We worked steadily for five-and-twenty minutes, and did four
potatoes. Then we struck. We said we should require the rest of the evening
for scraping ourselves.
I never saw such a thing as potato-scraping for making a
fellow in a
mess. It seemed difficult to believe that the potato-scrapings in which
Harris and I stood, half smothered, could have come off four potatoes.
It shows you what can be done with economy and care.
George said it was absurd to have only four potatoes in an
Irish stew, so we washed half-a-dozen or so more, and put them in without
peeling. We also put in a cabbage and about half a peck of peas. George
stirred it all up, and then he said that there seemed to be a lot of room to
spare, so we overhauled both the hampers, and picked out all the odds and
ends and the remnants, and added them to the stew. There were half a pork
pie and a bit of cold boiled bacon left, and we put them in. Then George
found half a tin of potted salmon, and he emptied that into the pot.
He said that was the advantage of Irish stew: you got rid of
such a lot of things. I fished out a couple of eggs that had got cracked,
and put those in. George said they would thicken the gravy.
I forget the other ingredients, but I know nothing was
wasted; and I remember that, towards the end, Montmorency, who had evinced
great interest in the proceedings throughout, strolled away with an earnest
and thoughtful air, reappearing, a few minutes afterwards, with a dead
water- rat in his mouth, which he evidently wished to present as his
contribution to the dinner; whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a genuine
desire to assist, I cannot say.
We had a discussion as to whether the rat should go in or
not. Harris said that he thought it would be all right, mixed up with the
other things, and that every little helped; but George stood up for
precedent. He said he had never heard of water-rats in Irish stew, and he
would rather be on the safe side, and not try experiments.
Harris said:
"If you never try a new thing, how can you tell what it's
like? It's men such as you that hamper the world's progress. Think of the
man who first tried German sausage!"
It was a great success, that Irish stew. I don't think I
ever enjoyed a meal more. There was something so fresh and piquant about it.
One's palate gets so tired of the old hackneyed things: here was a dish with
a new flavour, with a taste like nothing else on earth.
And it was nourishing, too. As George said, there was good
stuff in it. The peas and potatoes might have been a bit softer, but we all
had good teeth, so that did not matter much: and as for the gravy, it was a
poem - a little too rich, perhaps, for a weak stomach, but nutritious.
We finished up with tea and cherry tart. Montmorency had a
fight with the kettle during tea-time, and came off a poor second.
Throughout the trip, he had manifested great curiosity
concerning the kettle. He would sit and watch it, as it boiled, with a
puzzled expression, and would try and rouse it every now and then by
growling at it. When it began to splutter and steam, he regarded it as a
challenge, and would want to fight it, only, at that precise moment, some
one would always dash up and bear off his prey before he could get at it.
To-day he determined he would be beforehand. At the first
sound the kettle made, he rose, growling, and advanced towards it in a
threatening attitude. It was only a little kettle, but it was full of pluck,
and it up and spit at him.
"Ah! would ye!" growled Montmorency, showing his teeth;
"I'll teach ye to cheek a hard-working, respectable dog; ye miserable,
long-nosed, dirty- looking scoundrel, ye. Come on!"
And he rushed at that poor little kettle, and seized it by
the spout.
Then, across the evening stillness, broke a blood-curdling
yelp, and Montmorency left the boat, and did a constitutional three times
round the island at the rate of thirty-five miles an hour, stopping every
now and then to bury his nose in a bit of cool mud.
From that day Montmorency regarded the kettle with a mixture
of awe, suspicion, and hate. Whenever he saw it he would growl and back at a
rapid rate, with his tail shut down, and the moment it was put upon the
stove he would promptly climb out of the boat, and sit on the bank, till the
whole tea business was over.
George got out his banjo after supper, and wanted to play
it, but Harris objected: he said he had got a headache, and did not feel
strong enough to stand it. George thought the music might do him good - said
music often soothed the nerves and took away a headache; and he twanged two
or three notes, just to show Harris what it was like.
Harris said he would rather have the headache.
George has never learned to play the banjo to this day. He
has had too much all-round discouragement to meet. He tried on two or three
evenings, while we were up the river, to get a little practice, but it was
never a success. Harris's language used to be enough to unnerve any man;
added to which, Montmorency would sit and howl steadily, right through the
performance. It was not giving the man a fair chance.
"What's he want to howl like that for when I'm playing?"
George would exclaim indignantly, while taking aim at him with a boot.
"What do you want to play like that for when he is howling?"
Harris would retort, catching the boot. "You let him alone. He can't help
howling. He's got a musical ear, and your playing MAKES him howl."
So George determined to postpone study of the banjo until he
reached home. But he did not get much opportunity even there. Mrs. P. used
to come up and say she was very sorry - for herself, she liked to hear him -
but the lady upstairs was in a very delicate state, and the doctor was
afraid it might injure the child.
Then George tried taking it out with him late at night, and
practising round the square. But the inhabitants complained to the police
about it, and a watch was set for him one night, and he was captured. The
evidence against him was very clear, and he was bound over to keep the peace
for six months.
He seemed to lose heart in the business after that. He did
make one or two feeble efforts to take up the work again when the six months
had elapsed, but there was always the same coldness - the same want of
sympathy on the part of the world to fight against; and, after awhile, he
despaired altogether, and advertised the instrument for sale at a great
sacrifice - "owner having no further use for same" - and took to learning
card tricks instead.
It must be disheartening work learning a musical instrument.
You would think that Society, for its own sake, would do all it could to
assist a man to acquire the art of playing a musical instrument. But it
doesn't!
I knew a young fellow once, who was studying to play the
bagpipes, and you would be surprised at the amount of opposition he had to
contend with. Why, not even from the members of his own family did he
receive what you could call active encouragement. His father was dead
against the business from the beginning, and spoke quite unfeelingly on the
subject.
My friend used to get up early in the morning to practise,
but he had to give that plan up, because of his sister. She was somewhat
religiously inclined, and she said it seemed such an awful thing to begin
the day like that.
So he sat up at night instead, and played after the family
had gone to bed, but that did not do, as it got the house such a bad name.
People, going home late, would stop outside to listen, and then put it about
all over the town, the next morning, that a fearful murder had been
committed at Mr. Jefferson's the night before; and would describe how they
had heard the victim's shrieks and the brutal oaths and curses of the
murderer, followed by the prayer for mercy, and the last dying gurgle of the
corpse.
So they let him practise in the day-time, in the
back-kitchen with all the doors shut; but his more successful passages could
generally be heard in the sitting-room, in spite of these precautions, and
would affect his mother almost to tears.
She said it put her in mind of her poor father (he had been
swallowed by a shark, poor man, while bathing off the coast of New Guinea -
where the connection came in, she could not explain).
Then they knocked up a little place for him at the bottom of
the garden, about quarter of a mile from the house, and made him take the
machine down there when he wanted to work it; and sometimes a visitor would
come to the house who knew nothing of the matter, and they would forget to
tell him all about it, and caution him, and he would go out for a stroll
round the garden and suddenly get within earshot of those bagpipes, without
being prepared for it, or knowing what it was. If he were a man of strong
mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it
usually sent mad.
There is, it must be confessed, something very sad about the
early efforts of an amateur in bagpipes. I have felt that myself when
listening to my young friend. They appear to be a trying instrument to
perform upon. You have to get enough breath for the whole tune before you
start - at least, so I gathered from watching Jefferson.
He would begin magnificently with a wild, full,
come-to-the-battle sort of a note, that quite roused you. But he would get
more and more piano as he went on, and the last verse generally collapsed in
the middle with a splutter and a hiss.
You want to be in good health to play the bagpipes.
Young Jefferson only learnt to play one tune on those
bagpipes; but I never heard any complaints about the insufficiency of his
repertoire - none whatever. This tune was "The Campbells are Coming, Hooray
- Hooray!" so he said, though his father always held that it was "The Blue
Bells of Scotland." Nobody seemed quite sure what it was exactly, but they
all agreed that it sounded Scotch.
Strangers were allowed three guesses, and most of them
guessed a different tune each time.
Harris was disagreeable after supper, - I think it must have
been the stew that had upset him: he is not used to high living, - so George
and I left him in the boat, and settled to go for a mouch round Henley. He
said he should have a glass of whisky and a pipe, and fix things up for the
night. We were to shout when we returned, and he would row over from the
island and fetch us.
"Don't go to sleep, old man," we said as we started.
"Not much fear of that while this stew's on," he grunted, as
he pulled back to the island.
Henley was getting ready for the regatta, and was full of
bustle. We met a goodish number of men we knew about the town, and in their
pleasant company the time slipped by somewhat quickly; so that it was nearly
eleven o'clock before we set off on our four-mile walk home - as we had
learned to call our little craft by this time.
It was a dismal night, coldish, with a thin rain falling;
and as we trudged through the dark, silent fields, talking low to each
other, and wondering if we were going right or not, we thought of the cosy
boat, with the bright light streaming through the tight-drawn canvas; of
Harris and Montmorency, and the whisky, and wished that we were there.
We conjured up the picture of ourselves inside, tired and a
little hungry; of the gloomy river and the shapeless trees; and, like a
giant glow-worm underneath them, our dear old boat, so snug and warm and
cheerful. We could see ourselves at supper there, pecking away at cold meat,
and passing each other chunks of bread; we could hear the cheery clatter of
our knives, the laughing voices, filling all the space, and overflowing
through the opening out into the night. And we hurried on to realise the
vision.
We struck the tow-path at length, and that made us happy;
because prior to this we had not been sure whether we were walking towards
the river or away from it, and when you are tired and want to go to bed
uncertainties like that worry you. We passed Skiplake as the clock was
striking the quarter to twelve; and then George said, thoughtfully:
"You don't happen to remember which of the islands it was,
do you?"
"No," I replied, beginning to grow thoughtful too, "I don't.
How many are there?"
"Only four," answered George. "It will be all right, if he's
awake."
"And if not?" I queried; but we dismissed that train of
thought.
We shouted when we came opposite the first island, but there
was no response; so we went to the second, and tried there, and obtained the
same result.
"Oh! I remember now," said George; "it was the third one."
And we ran on hopefully to the third one, and hallooed.
No answer!
The case was becoming serious. it was now past midnight. The
hotels at Skiplake and Henley would be crammed; and we could not go round,
knocking up cottagers and householders in the middle of the night, to know
if they let apartments! George suggested walking back to Henley and
assaulting a policeman, and so getting a night's lodging in the
station-house. But then there was the thought, "Suppose he only hits us back
and refuses to lock us up!"
We could not pass the whole night fighting policemen.
Besides, we did not want to overdo the thing and get six months.
We despairingly tried what seemed in the darkness to be the
fourth island, but met with no better success. The rain was coming down fast
now, and evidently meant to last. We were wet to the skin, and cold and
miserable. We began to wonder whether there were only four islands or more,
or whether we were near the islands at all, or whether we were anywhere
within a mile of where we ought to be, or in the wrong part of the river
altogether; everything looked so strange and different in the darkness. We
began to understand the sufferings of the Babes in the Wood.
Just when we had given up all hope - yes, I know that is
always the time that things do happen in novels and tales; but I can't help
it. I resolved, when I began to write this book, that I would be strictly
truthful in all things; and so I will be, even if I have to employ hackneyed
phrases for the purpose.
It WAS just when we had given up all hope, and I must
therefore say so. Just when we had given up all hope, then, I suddenly
caught sight, a little way below us, of a strange, weird sort of glimmer
flickering among the trees on the opposite bank. For an instant I thought of
ghosts: it was such a shadowy, mysterious light. The next moment it flashed
across me that it was our boat, and I sent up such a yell across the water
that made the night seem to shake in its bed.
We waited breathless for a minute, and then - oh! divinest
music of the darkness! - we heard the answering bark of Montmorency. We
shouted back loud enough to wake the Seven Sleepers - I never could
understand myself why it should take more noise to wake seven sleepers than
one - and, after what seemed an hour, but what was really, I suppose, about
five minutes, we saw the lighted boat creeping slowly over the blackness,
and heard Harris's sleepy voice asking where we were.
There was an unaccountable strangeness about Harris. It was
something more than mere ordinary tiredness. He pulled the boat against a
part of the bank from which it was quite impossible for us to get into it,
and immediately went to sleep. It took us an immense amount of screaming and
roaring to wake him up again and put some sense into him; but we succeeded
at last, and got safely on board.
Harris had a sad expression on him, so we noticed, when we
got into the boat. He gave you the idea of a man who had been through
trouble. We asked him if anything had happened, and he said-
"Swans!"
It seemed we had moored close to a swan's nest, and, soon
after George and I had gone, the female swan came back, and kicked up a row
about it. Harris had chivied her off, and she had gone away, and fetched up
her old man. Harris said he had had quite a fight with these two swans; but
courage and skill had prevailed in the end, and he had defeated them.
Half-an-hour afterwards they returned with eighteen other
swans! It must have been a fearful battle, so far as we could understand
Harris's account of it. The swans had tried to drag him and Montmorency out
of the boat and drown them; and he had defended himself like a hero for four
hours, and had killed the lot, and they had all paddled away to die.
"How many swans did you say there were?" asked George.
"Thirty-two," replied Harris, sleepily.
"You said eighteen just now," said George.
"No, I didn't," grunted Harris; "I said twelve. Think I
can't count?"
What were the real facts about these swans we never found
out. We questioned Harris on the subject in the morning, and he said, "What
swans?" and seemed to think that George and I had been dreaming.
Oh, how delightful it was to be safe in the boat, after our
trials and fears! We ate a hearty supper, George and I, and we should have
had some toddy after it, if we could have found the whisky, but we could
not. We examined Harris as to what he had done with it; but he did not seem
to know what we meant by "whisky," or what we were talking about at all.
Montmorency looked as if he knew something, but said nothing.
I slept well that night, and should have slept better if it
had not been for Harris. I have a vague recollection of having been woke up
at least a dozen times during the night by Harris wandering about the boat
with the lantern, looking for his clothes. He seemed to be worrying about
his clothes all night.
Twice he routed up George and myself to see if we were lying
on his trousers. George got quite wild the second time.
"What the thunder do you want your trousers for, in the
middle of the night?" he asked indignantly. "Why don't you lie down, and go
to sleep?"
I found him in trouble, the next time I awoke, because he
could not find his socks; and my last hazy remembrance is of being rolled
over on my side, and of hearing Harris muttering something about its being
an extraordinary thing where his umbrella could have got to.
CHAPTER XV.
HOUSEHOLD DUTIES. - LOVE OF WORK. -
THE OLD RIVER HAND, WHAT HE DOES AND WHAT HE TELLS YOU HE HAS DONE. -
SCEPTICISM OF THE NEW GENERATION. - EARLY BOATING RECOLLECTIONS. - RAFTING.
- GEORGE DOES THE THING IN STYLE. - THE OLD BOATMAN, HIS METHOD. - SO CALM,
SO FULL OF PEACE. - THE BEGINNER. - PUNTING. - A SAD ACCIDENT. - PLEASURES
OF FRIENDSHIP. - SAILING, MY FIRST EXPERIENCE. - POSSIBLE REASON WHY WE WERE
NOT DROWNED.
WE woke late the next morning, and, at Harris's earnest
desire, partook of a plain breakfast, with "non dainties." Then we cleaned
up, and put everything straight (a continual labour, which was beginning to
afford me a pretty clear insight into a question that had often posed me -
namely, how a woman with the work of only one house on her hands manages to
pass away her time), and, at about ten, set out on what we had determined
should be a good day's journey.
We agreed that we would pull this morning, as a change from
towing; and Harris thought the best arrangement would be that George and I
should scull, and he steer. I did not chime in with this idea at all; I said
I thought Harris would have been showing a more proper spirit if he had
suggested that he and George should work, and let me rest a bit. It seemed
to me that I was doing more than my fair share of the work on this trip, and
I was beginning to feel strongly on the subject.
It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I
should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it
fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me:
the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.
You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has
almost become a passion with me: my study is so full of it now, that there
is hardly an inch of room for any more. I shall have to throw out a wing
soon.
And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that
I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there
isn't a finger-mark on it. I take a great pride in my work; I take it down
now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of
preservation than I do.
But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. I do
not ask for more than my proper share.
But I get it without asking for it - at least, so it appears
to me - and this worries me.
George says he does not think I need trouble myself on the
subject. He thinks it is only my over-scrupulous nature that makes me fear I
am having more than my due; and that, as a matter of fact, I don't have half
as much as I ought. But I expect he only says this to comfort me.
In a boat, I have always noticed that it is the fixed idea
of each member of the crew that he is doing everything. Harris's notion was,
that it was he alone who had been working, and that both George and I had
been imposing upon him. George, on the other hand, ridiculed the idea of
Harris's having done anything more than eat and sleep, and had a cast- iron
opinion that it was he - George himself - who had done all the labour worth
speaking of.
He said he had never been out with such a couple of lazily
skulks as
Harris and I.
That amused Harris.
"Fancy old George talking about work!" he laughed; "why,
about half-an- hour of it would kill him. Have you ever seen George work?"
he added, turning to me.
I agreed with Harris that I never had - most certainly not
since we had started on this trip.
"Well, I don't see how YOU can know much about it, one way
or the other," George retorted on Harris; "for I'm blest if you haven't been
asleep half the time. Have you ever seen Harris fully awake, except at
meal-time?" asked George, addressing me.
Truth compelled me to support George. Harris had been very
little good in the boat, so far as helping was concerned, from the
beginning.
"Well, hang it all, I've done more than old J., anyhow,"
rejoined Harris.
"Well, you couldn't very well have done less," added George.
"I suppose J. thinks he is the passenger," continued Harris.
And that was their gratitude to me for having brought them
and their wretched old boat all the way up from Kingston, and for having
superintended and managed everything for them, and taken care of them, and
slaved for them. It is the way of the world.
We settled the present difficulty by arranging that Harris
and George should scull up past Reading, and that I should tow the boat on
from there. Pulling a heavy boat against a strong stream has few attractions
for me now. There was a time, long ago, when I used to clamour for the hard
work: now I like to give the youngsters a chance.
I notice that most of the old river hands are similarly
retiring, whenever there is any stiff pulling to be done. You can always
tell the old river hand by the way in which he stretches himself out upon
the cushions at the bottom of the boat, and encourages the rowers by telling
them anecdotes about the marvellous feats he performed last season.
"Call what you're doing hard work!" he drawls, between his
contented whiffs, addressing the two perspiring novices, who have been
grinding away steadily up stream for the last hour and a half; "why, Jim
Biffles and Jack and I, last season, pulled up from Marlow to Goring in one
afternoon - never stopped once. Do you remember that, Jack?"
Jack, who has made himself a bed up in the prow of all the
rugs and coats he can collect, and who has been lying there asleep for the
last two hours, partially wakes up on being thus appealed to, and recollects
all about the matter, and also remembers that there was an unusually strong
stream against them all the way - likewise a stiff wind.
"About thirty-four miles, I suppose, it must have been,"
adds the first speaker, reaching down another cushion to put under his head.
" No - no; don't exaggerate, Tom," murmurs Jack,
reprovingly; "thirty- three at the outside."
And Jack and Tom, quite exhausted by this conversational
effort, drop off to sleep once more. And the two simple-minded youngsters at
the sculls feel quite proud of being allowed to row such wonderful oarsmen
as Jack and Tom, and strain away harder than ever.
When I was a young man, I used to listen to these tales from
my elders, and take them in, and swallow them, and digest every word of
them, and then come up for more; but the new generation do not seem to have
the simple faith of the old times. We - George, Harris, and myself - took a
"raw'un" up with us once last season, and we plied him with the customary
stretchers about the wonderful things we had done all the way up.
We gave him all the regular ones - the time-honoured lies
that have done duty up the river with every boating-man for years past - and
added seven entirely original ones that we had invented for ourselves,
including a really quite likely story, founded, to a certain extent, on an
all but true episode, which had actually happened in a modified degree some
years ago to friends of ours - a story that a mere child could have believed
without injuring itself, much.
And that young man mocked at them all, and wanted us to
repeat the feats then and there, and to bet us ten to one that we didn't.
We got to chatting about our rowing experiences this
morning, and to recounting stories of our first efforts in the art of
oarsmanship. My own earliest boating recollection is of five of us
contributing threepence each and taking out a curiously constructed craft on
the Regent's Park lake, drying ourselves subsequently, in the park-keeper's
lodge.
After that, having acquired a taste for the water, I did a
good deal of rafting in various suburban brickfields - an exercise providing
more interest and excitement than might be imagined, especially when you are
in the middle of the pond and the proprietor of the materials of which the
raft is constructed suddenly appears on the bank, with a big stick in his
hand.
Your first sensation on seeing this gentleman is that,
somehow or other, you don't feel equal to company and conversation, and
that, if you could do so without appearing rude, you would rather avoid
meeting him; and your object is, therefore, to get off on the opposite side
of the pond to which he is, and to go home quietly and quickly, pretending
not to see him. He, on the contrary is yearning to take you by the hand, and
talk to you.
It appears that he knows your father, and is intimately
acquainted with yourself, but this does not draw you towards him. He says
he'll teach you to take his boards and make a raft of them; but, seeing that
you know how to do this pretty well already, the offer, though doubtless
kindly meant, seems a superfluous one on his part, and you are reluctant to
put him to any trouble by accepting it.
His anxiety to meet you, however, is proof against all your
coolness, and the energetic manner in which he dodges up and down the pond
so as to be on the spot to greet you when you land is really quite
flattering.
If he be of a stout and short-winded build, you can easily
avoid his advances; but, when he is of the youthful and long-legged type, a
meeting is inevitable. The interview is, however, extremely brief, most of
the conversation being on his part, your remarks being mostly of an
exclamatory and mono-syllabic order, and as soon as you can tear yourself
away you do so.
I devoted some three months to rafting, and, being then as
proficient as there was any need to be at that branch of the art, I
determined to go in for rowing proper, and joined one of the Lea boating
clubs.
Being out in a boat on the river Lea, especially on Saturday
afternoons, soon makes you smart at handling a craft, and spry at escaping
being run down by roughs or swamped by barges; and it also affords plenty of
opportunity for acquiring the most prompt and graceful method of lying down
flat at the bottom of the boat so as to avoid being chucked out into the
river by passing tow-lines.
But it does not give you style. It was not till I came to
the Thames that I got style. My style of rowing is very much admired now.
People say it is so quaint.
George never went near the water until he was sixteen. Then
he and eight other gentlemen of about the same age went down in a body to
Kew one Saturday, with the idea of hiring a boat there, and pulling to
Richmond and back; one of their number, a shock-headed youth, named Joskins,
who had once or twice taken out a boat on the Serpentine, told them it was
jolly fun, boating!
The tide was running out pretty rapidly when they reached
the landing- stage, and there was a stiff breeze blowing across the river,
but this did not trouble them at all, and they proceeded to select their
boat.
There was an eight-oared racing outrigger drawn up on the
stage; that was the one that took their fancy. They said they'd have that
one, please. The boatman was away, and only his boy was in charge. The boy
tried to damp their ardour for the outrigger, and showed them two or three
very comfortable-looking boats of the family-party build, but those would
not do at all; the outrigger was the boat they thought they would look best
in.
So the boy launched it, and they took off their coats and
prepared to take their seats. The boy suggested that George, who, even in
those days, was always the heavy man of any party, should be number four.
George said he should be happy to be number four, and promptly stepped into
bow's place, and sat down with his back to the stern. They got him into his
proper position at last, and then the others followed.
A particularly nervous boy was appointed cox, and the
steering principle explained to him by Joskins. Joskins himself took stroke.
He told the others that it was simple enough; all they had to do was to
follow him.
They said they were ready, and the boy on the landing stage
took a boat- hook and shoved him off.
What then followed George is unable to describe in detail.
He has a confused recollection of having, immediately on starting, received
a violent blow in the small of the back from the butt-end of number five's
scull, at the same time that his own seat seemed to disappear from under him
by magic, and leave him sitting on the boards. He also noticed, as a curious
circumstance, that number two was at the same instant lying on his back at
the bottom of the boat, with his legs in the air, apparently in a fit.
They passed under Kew Bridge, broadside, at the rate of
eight miles an hour. Joskins being the only one who was rowing. George, on
recovering his seat, tried to help him, but, on dipping his oar into the
water, it immediately, to his intense surprise, disappeared under the boat,
and nearly took him with it.
And then "cox" threw both rudder lines over-board, and burst
into tears.
How they got back George never knew, but it took them just
forty minutes. A dense crowd watched the entertainment from Kew Bridge with
much interest, and everybody shouted out to them different directions. Three
times they managed to get the boat back through the arch, and three times
they were carried under it again, and every time "cox" looked up and saw the
bridge above him he broke out into renewed sobs.
George said he little thought that afternoon that he should
ever come to really like boating.
Harris is more accustomed to sea rowing than to river work,
and says that, as an exercise, he prefers it. I don't. I remember taking a
small boat out at Eastbourne last summer: I used to do a good deal of sea
rowing years ago, and I thought I should be all right; but I found I had
forgotten the art entirely. When one scull was deep down underneath the
water, the other would be flourishing wildly about in the air. To get a grip
of the water with both at the same time I had to stand up. The parade was
crowded with nobility and gentry, and I had to pull past them in this
ridiculous fashion. I landed half-way down the beach, and secured the
services of an old boatman to take me back.
I like to watch an old boatman rowing, especially one who
has been hired by the hour. There is something so beautifully calm and
restful about his method. It is so free from that fretful haste, that
vehement striving, that is every day becoming more and more the bane of
nineteenth-century life. He is not for ever straining himself to pass all
the other boats. If another boat overtakes him and passes him it does not
annoy him; as a matter of fact, they all do overtake him and pass him - all
those that are going his way. This would trouble and irritate some people;
the sublime equanimity of the hired boatman under the ordeal affords us a
beautiful lesson against ambition and uppishness.
Plain practical rowing of the get-the-boat-along order is
not a very difficult art to acquire, but it takes a good deal of practice
before a man feels comfortable, when rowing past girls. It is the "time"
that worries a youngster. "It's jolly funny," he says, as for the twentieth
time within five minutes he disentangles his sculls from yours; "I can get
on all right when I'm by myself!"
To see two novices try to keep time with one another is very
amusing. Bow finds it impossible to keep pace with stroke, because stroke
rows in such an extraordinary fashion. Stroke is intensely indignant at
this, and explains that what he has been endeavouring to do for the last ten
minutes is to adapt his method to bow's limited capacity. Bow, in turn, then
becomes insulted, and requests stroke not to trouble his head about him
(bow), but to devote his mind to setting a sensible stroke.
"Or, shall I take stroke?" he adds, with the evident idea
that that would at once put the whole matter right.
They splash along for another hundred yards with still
moderate success, and then the whole secret of their trouble bursts upon
stroke like a flash of inspiration.
"I tell you what it is: you've got my sculls," he cries,
turning to bow; "pass yours over."
"Well, do you know, I've been wondering how it was I
couldn't get on with these," answers bow, quite brightening up, and most
willingly assisting in the exchange. "NOW we shall be all right."
But they are not - not even then. Stroke has to stretch his
arms nearly out of their sockets to reach his sculls now; while bow's pair,
at each recovery, hit him a violent blow in the chest. So they change back
again, and come to the conclusion that the man has given them the wrong set
altogether; and over their mutual abuse of this man they become quite
friendly and sympathetic.
George said he had often longed to take to punting for a
change. Punting is not as easy as it looks. As in rowing, you soon learn how
to get along and handle the craft, but it takes long practice before you can
do this with dignity and without getting the water all up your sleeve.
One young man I knew had a very sad accident happen to him
the first time he went punting. He had been getting on so well that he had
grown quite cheeky over the business, and was walking up and down the punt,
working his pole with a careless grace that was quite fascinating to watch.
Up he would march to the head of the punt, plant his pole, and then run
along right to the other end, just like an old punter. Oh! it was grand.
And it would all have gone on being grand if he had not
unfortunately, while looking round to enjoy the scenery, taken just one step
more than there was any necessity for, and walked off the punt altogether.
The pole was firmly fixed in the mud, and he was left clinging to it while
the punt drifted away. It was an undignified position for him. A rude boy on
the bank immediately yelled out to a lagging chum to "hurry up and see real
monkey on a stick."
I could not go to his assistance, because, as ill-luck would
have it, we had not taken the proper precaution to bring out a spare pole
with us. I could only sit and look at him. His expression as the pole slowly
sank with him I shall never forget; there was so much thought in it.
I watched him gently let down into the water, and saw him
scramble out, sad and wet. I could not help laughing, he looked such a
ridiculous figure. I continued to chuckle to myself about it for some time,
and then it was suddenly forced in upon me that really I had got very little
to laugh at when I came to think of it. Here was I, alone in a punt, without
a pole, drifting helplessly down mid-stream - possibly towards a weir.
I began to feel very indignant with my friend for having
stepped overboard and gone off in that way. He might, at all events, have
left me the pole.
I drifted on for about a quarter of a mile, and then I came
in sight of a fishing-punt moored in mid-stream, in which sat two old
fishermen. They saw me bearing down upon them, and they called out to me to
keep out of their way.
"I can't," I shouted back.
"But you don't try," they answered.
I explained the matter to them when I got nearer, and they
caught me and lent me a pole. The weir was just fifty yards below. I am glad
they happened to be there.
The first time I went punting was in company with three
other fellows; they were going to show me how to do it. We could not all
start together, so I said I would go down first and get out the punt, and
then I could potter about and practice a bit until they came.
I could not get a punt out that afternoon, they were all
engaged; so I had nothing else to do but to sit down on the bank, watching
the river, and waiting for my friends.
I had not been sitting there long before my attention became
attracted to a man in a punt who, I noticed with some surprise, wore a
jacket and cap exactly like mine. He was evidently a novice at punting, and
his performance was most interesting. You never knew what was going to
happen when he put the pole in; he evidently did not know himself. Sometimes
he shot up stream and sometimes he shot down stream, and at other times he
simply spun round and came up the other side of the pole. And with every
result he seemed equally surprised and annoyed.
The people about the river began to get quite absorbed in
him after a while, and to make bets with one another as to what would be the
outcome of his next push.
In the course of time my friends arrived on the opposite
bank, and they stopped and watched him too. His back was towards them, and
they only saw his jacket and cap. From this they immediately jumped to the
conclusion that it was I, their beloved companion, who was making an
exhibition of himself, and their delight knew no bounds. They commenced to
chaff him unmercifully.
I did not grasp their mistake at first, and I thought, "How
rude of them to go on like that, with a perfect stranger, too!" But before I
could call out and reprove them, the explanation of the matter occurred to
me, and I withdrew behind a tree.
Oh, how they enjoyed themselves, ridiculing that young man!
For five good minutes they stood there, shouting ribaldry at him, deriding
him, mocking him, jeering at him. They peppered him with stale jokes, they
even made a few new ones and threw at him. They hurled at him all the
private family jokes belonging to our set, and which must have been
perfectly unintelligible to him. And then, unable to stand their brutal
jibes any longer, he turned round on them, and they saw his face!
I was glad to notice that they had sufficient decency left
in them to look very foolish. They explained to him that they had thought he
was some one they knew. They said they hoped he would not deem them capable
of so insulting any one except a personal friend of their own.
Of course their having mistaken him for a friend excused it.
I remember Harris telling me once of a bathing experience he had at
Boulogne. He was swimming about there near the beach, when he felt himself
suddenly seized by the neck from behind, and forcibly plunged under water.
He struggled violently, but whoever had got hold of him seemed to be a
perfect Hercules in strength, and all his efforts to escape were unavailing.
He had given up kicking, and was trying to turn his thoughts upon solemn
things, when his captor released him.
He regained his feet, and looked round for his would-be
murderer. The assassin was standing close by him, laughing heartily, but the
moment he caught sight of Harris's face, as it emerged from the water, he
started back and seemed quite concerned.
"I really beg your pardon," he stammered confusedly, "but I
took you for a friend of mine!"
Harris thought it was lucky for him the man had not mistaken
him for a relation, or he would probably have been drowned outright.
Sailing is a thing that wants knowledge and practice too -
though, as a boy, I did not think so. I had an idea it came natural to a
body, like rounders and touch. I knew another boy who held this view
likewise, and so, one windy day, we thought we would try the sport. We were
stopping down at Yarmouth, and we decided we would go for a trip up the
Yare. We hired a sailing boat at the yard by the bridge, and started off.
"It's rather a rough day," said the man to us, as we put off: "better take
in a reef and luff sharp when you get round the bend."
We said we would make a point of it, and left him with a
cheery "Good- morning," wondering to ourselves how you "luffed," and where
we were to get a "reef" from, and what we were to do with it when we had got
it.
We rowed until we were out of sight of the town, and then,
with a wide stretch of water in front of us, and the wind blowing a perfect
hurricane across it, we felt that the time had come to commence operations.
Hector - I think that was his name - went on pulling while I
unrolled the sail. It seemed a complicated job, but I accomplished it at
length, and then came the question, which was the top end?
By a sort of natural instinct, we, of course, eventually
decided that the bottom was the top, and set to work to fix it upside-down.
But it was a long time before we could get it up, either that way or any
other way. The impression on the mind of the sail seemed to be that we were
playing at funerals, and that I was the corpse and itself was the
winding-sheet.
When it found that this was not the idea, it hit me over the
head with the boom, and refused to do anything.
"Wet it," said Hector; "drop it over and get it wet."
He said people in ships always wetted the sails before they
put them up.
So I wetted it; but that only made matters worse than they were before.
A dry sail clinging to your legs and wrapping itself round your head is
not pleasant, but, when the sail is sopping wet, it becomes quite vexing.
We did get the thing up at last, the two of us together. We
fixed it, not exactly upside down - more sideways like - and we tied it up
to the mast with the painter, which we cut off for the purpose.
That the boat did not upset I simply state as a fact. Why it
did not upset I am unable to offer any reason. I have often thought about
the matter since, but I have never succeeded in arriving at any satisfactory
explanation of the phenomenon.
Possibly the result may have been brought about by the
natural obstinacy of all things in this world. The boat may possibly have
come to the conclusion, judging from a cursory view of our behaviour, that
we had come out for a morning's suicide, and had thereupon determined to
disappoint us. That is the only suggestion I can offer.
By clinging like grim death to the gunwale, we just managed
to keep inside the boat, but it was exhausting work. Hector said that
pirates and other seafaring people generally lashed the rudder to something
or other, and hauled in the main top-jib, during severe squalls, and thought
we ought to try to do something of the kind; but I was for letting her have
her head to the wind.
As my advice was by far the easiest to follow, we ended by
adopting it, and contrived to embrace the gunwale and give her her head.
The boat travelled up stream for about a mile at a pace I
have never sailed at since, and don't want to again. Then, at a bend, she
heeled over till half her sail was under water. Then she righted herself by
a miracle and flew for a long low bank of soft mud.
That mud-bank saved us. The boat ploughed its way into the
middle of it and then stuck. Finding that we were once more able to move
according to our ideas, instead of being pitched and thrown about like peas
in a bladder, we crept forward, and cut down the sail.
We had had enough sailing. We did not want to overdo the
thing and get a surfeit of it. We had had a sail - a good all-round
exciting, interesting sail - and now we thought we would have a row, just
for a change like.
We took the sculls and tried to push the boat off the mud,
and, in doing so, we broke one of the sculls. After that we proceeded with
great caution, but they were a wretched old pair, and the second one cracked
almost easier than the first, and left us helpless.
The mud stretched out for about a hundred yards in front of
us, and behind us was the water. The only thing to be done was to sit and
wait until someone came by.
It was not the sort of day to attract people out on the
river, and it was three hours before a soul came in sight. It was an old
fisherman who, with immense difficulty, at last rescued us, and we were
towed back in an ignominious fashion to the boat-yard.
What between tipping the man who had brought us home, and
paying for the broken sculls, and for having been out four hours and a half,
it cost us a pretty considerable number of weeks' pocket-money, that sail.
But we learned experience, and they say that is always cheap at any price.
CHAPTER XVI.
READING. - WE ARE TOWED BY STEAM
LAUNCH. - IRRITATING BEHAVIOUR OF SMALL BOATS. - HOW THEY GET IN THE WAY OF
STEAM LAUNCHES. - GEORGE AND HARRIS AGAIN SHIRK THEIR WORK. - RATHER A
HACKNEYED STORY. - STREATLEY AND GORING.
WE came in sight of Reading about eleven. The river is dirty
and dismal here. One does not linger in the neighbourhood of Reading. The
town itself is a famous old place, dating from the dim days of King
Ethelred, when the Danes anchored their warships in the Kennet, and started
from Reading to ravage all the land of Wessex; and here Ethelred and his
brother Alfred fought and defeated them, Ethelred doing the praying and
Alfred the fighting.
In later years, Reading seems to have been regarded as a
handy place to run down to, when matters were becoming unpleasant in London.
Parliament generally rushed off to Reading whenever there was a plague on at
Westminster; and, in 1625, the Law followed suit, and all the courts were
held at Reading. It must have been worth while having a mere ordinary plague
now and then in London to get rid of both the lawyers and the Parliament.
During the Parliamentary struggle, Reading was besieged by
the Earl of
Essex, and, a quarter of a century later, the Prince of Orange routed
King James's troops there.
Henry I. lies buried at Reading, in the Benedictine abbey
founded by him there, the ruins of which may still be seen; and, in this
same abbey, great John of Gaunt was married to the Lady Blanche.
At Reading lock we came up with a steam launch, belonging to
some friends of mine, and they towed us up to within about a mile of
Streatley. It is very delightful being towed up by a launch. I prefer it
myself to rowing. The run would have been more delightful still, if it had
not been for a lot of wretched small boats that were continually getting in
the way of our launch, and, to avoid running down which, we had to be
continually easing and stopping. It is really most annoying, the manner in
which these rowing boats get in the way of one's launch up the river;
something ought to done to stop it.
And they are so confoundedly impertinent, too, over it. You
can whistle till you nearly burst your boiler before they will trouble
themselves to hurry. I would have one or two of them run down now and then,
if I had my way, just to teach them all a lesson.
The river becomes very lovely from a little above Reading.
The railway rather spoils it near Tilehurst, but from Mapledurham up to
Streatley it is glorious. A little above Mapledurham lock you pass Hardwick
House, where Charles I. played bowls. The neighbourhood of Pangbourne, where
the quaint little Swan Inn stands, must be as familiar to the HABITUES of
the Art Exhibitions as it is to its own inhabitants.
My friends' launch cast us loose just below the grotto, and
then Harris wanted to make out that it was my turn to pull. This seemed to
me most unreasonable. It had been arranged in the morning that I should
bring the boat up to three miles above Reading. Well, here we were, ten
miles above Reading! Surely it was now their turn again.
I could not get either George or Harris to see the matter in
its proper light, however; so, to save argument, I took the sculls. I had
not been pulling for more than a minute or so, when George noticed something
black floating on the water, and we drew up to it. George leant over, as we
neared it, and laid hold of it. And then he drew back with a cry, and a
blanched face.
It was the dead body of a woman. It lay very lightly on the
water, and the face was sweet and calm. It was not a beautiful face; it was
too prematurely aged-looking, too thin and drawn, to be that; but it was a
gentle, lovable face, in spite of its stamp of pinch and poverty, and upon
it was that look of restful peace that comes to the faces of the sick
sometimes when at last the pain has left them.
Fortunately for us - we having no desire to be kept hanging
about coroners' courts - some men on the bank had seen the body too, and now
took charge of it from us.
We found out the woman's story afterwards. Of course it was
the old, old vulgar tragedy. She had loved and been deceived - or had
deceived herself. Anyhow, she had sinned - some of us do now and then - and
her family and friends, naturally shocked and indignant, had closed their
doors against her.
Left to fight the world alone, with the millstone of her
shame around her neck, she had sunk ever lower and lower. For a while she
had kept both herself and the child on the twelve shillings a week that
twelve hours' drudgery a day procured her, paying six shillings out of it
for the child, and keeping her own body and soul together on the remainder.
Six shillings a week does not keep body and soul together
very unitedly. They want to get away from each other when there is only such
a very slight bond as that between them; and one day, I suppose, the pain
and the dull monotony of it all had stood before her eyes plainer than
usual, and the mocking spectre had frightened her. She had made one last
appeal to friends, but, against the chill wall of their respectability, the
voice of the erring outcast fell unheeded; and then she had gone to see her
child - had held it in her arms and kissed it, in a weary, dull sort of way,
and without betraying any particular emotion of any kind, and had left it,
after putting into its hand a penny box of chocolate she had bought it, and
afterwards, with her last few shillings, had taken a ticket and come down to
Goring.
It seemed that the bitterest thoughts of her life must have
centred about the wooded reaches and the bright green meadows around Goring;
but women strangely hug the knife that stabs them, and, perhaps, amidst the
gall, there may have mingled also sunny memories of sweetest hours, spent
upon those shadowed deeps over which the great trees bend their branches
down so low.
She had wandered about the woods by the river's brink all
day, and then, when evening fell and the grey twilight spread its dusky robe
upon the waters, she stretched her arms out to the silent river that had
known her sorrow and her joy. And the old river had taken her into its
gentle arms, and had laid her weary head upon its bosom, and had hushed away
the pain.
Thus had she sinned in all things - sinned in living and in
dying. God help her! and all other sinners, if any more there be.
Goring on the left bank and Streatley on the right are both
or either charming places to stay at for a few days. The reaches down to
Pangbourne woo one for a sunny sail or for a moonlight row, and the country
round about is full of beauty. We had intended to push on to Wallingford
that day, but the sweet smiling face of the river here lured us to linger
for a while; and so we left our boat at the bridge, and went up into
Streatley, and lunched at the "Bull," much to Montmorency's satisfaction.
They say that the hills on each ride of the stream here once
joined and formed a barrier across what is now the Thames, and that then the
river ended there above Goring in one vast lake. I am not in a position
either to contradict or affirm this statement. I simply offer it.
It is an ancient place, Streatley, dating back, like most
river-side towns and villages, to British and Saxon times. Goring is not
nearly so pretty a little spot to stop at as Streatley, if you have your
choice; but it is passing fair enough in its way, and is nearer the railway
in case you want to slip off without paying your hotel bill.
CHAPTER XVII.
WASHING DAY. - FISH AND FISHERS. -
ON THE ART OF ANGLING. - A CONSCIENTIOUS FLY-FISHER. - A FISHY STORY.
WE stayed two days at Streatley, and got our clothes washed.
We had tried washing them ourselves, in the river, under George's
superintendence, and it had been a failure. Indeed, it had been more than a
failure, because we were worse off after we had washed our clothes than we
were before. Before we had washed them, they had been very, very dirty, it
is true; but they were just wearable. AFTER we had washed them - well, the
river between Reading and Henley was much cleaner, after we had washed our
clothes in it, than it was before. All the dirt contained in the river
between Reading and Henley, we collected, during that wash, and worked it
into our clothes.
The washerwoman at Streatley said she felt she owed it to
herself to charge us just three times the usual prices for that wash. She
said it had not been like washing, it had been more in the nature of
excavating.
We paid the bill without a murmur.
The neighbourhood of Streatley and Goring is a great fishing
centre. There is some excellent fishing to be had here. The river abounds in
pike, roach, dace, gudgeon, and eels, just here; and you can sit and fish
for them all day.
Some people do. They never catch them. I never knew anybody
catch anything, up the Thames, except minnows and dead cats, but that has
nothing to do, of course, with fishing! The local fisherman's guide doesn't
say a word about catching anything. All it says is the place is "a good
station for fishing;" and, from what I have seen of the district, I am quite
prepared to bear out this statement.
There is no spot in the world where you can get more
fishing, or where you can fish for a longer period. Some fishermen come here
and fish for a day, and others stop and fish for a month. You can hang on
and fish for a year, if you want to: it will be all the same.
The ANGLER'S GUIDE TO THE THAMES says that "jack and perch
are also to be had about here," but there the ANGLER'S GUIDE is wrong. Jack
and perch may BE about there. Indeed, I know for a fact that they are. You
can SEE them there in shoals, when you are out for a walk along the banks:
they come and stand half out of the water with their mouths open for
biscuits. And, if you go for a bathe, they crowd round, and get in your way,
and irritate you. But they are not to be "had" by a bit of worm on the end
of a hook, nor anything like it - not they!
I am not a good fisherman myself. I devoted a considerable
amount of attention to the subject at one time, and was getting on, as I
thought, fairly well; but the old hands told me that I should never be any
real good at it, and advised me to give it up. They said that I was an
extremely neat thrower, and that I seemed to have plenty of gumption for the
thing, and quite enough constitutional laziness. But they were sure I should
never make anything of a fisherman. I had not got sufficient imagination.
They said that as a poet, or a shilling shocker, or a
reporter, or anything of that kind, I might be satisfactory, but that, to
gain any position as a Thames angler, would require more play of fancy, more
power of invention than I appeared to possess.
Some people are under the impression that all that is
required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and
without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless;
the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the
embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous - almost
of pedantic - veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.
Anybody can come in and say, "Oh, I caught fifteen dozen
perch yesterday evening;" or "Last Monday I landed a gudgeon, weighing
eighteen pounds, and measuring three feet from the tip to the tail."
There is no art, no skill, required for that sort of thing.
It shows pluck, but that is all.
No; your accomplished angler would scorn to tell a lie, that
way. His method is a study in itself.
He comes in quietly with his hat on, appropriates the most
comfortable chair, lights his pipe, and commences to puff in silence. He
lets the youngsters brag away for a while, and then, during a momentary
lull, he removes the pipe from his mouth, and remarks, as he knocks the
ashes out against the bars:
"Well, I had a haul on Tuesday evening that it's not much
good my telling anybody about."
"Oh! why's that?" they ask.
"Because I don't expect anybody would believe me if I did,"
replies the old fellow calmly, and without even a tinge of bitterness in his
tone, as he refills his pipe, and requests the landlord to bring him three
of Scotch, cold.
There is a pause after this, nobody feeling sufficiently
sure of himself to contradict the old gentleman. So he has to go on by
himself without any encouragement.
"No," he continues thoughtfully; "I shouldn't believe it
myself if anybody told it to me, but it's a fact, for all that. I had been
sitting there all the afternoon and had caught literally nothing - except a
few dozen dace and a score of jack; and I was just about giving it up as a
bad job when I suddenly felt a rather smart pull at the line. I thought it
was another little one, and I went to jerk it up. Hang me, if I could move
the rod! It took me half-an-hour - half-an-hour, sir! - to land that fish;
and every moment I thought the line was going to snap! I reached him at
last, and what do you think it was? A sturgeon! a forty pound sturgeon!
taken on a line, sir! Yes, you may well look surprised - I'll have another
three of Scotch, landlord, please."
And then he goes on to tell of the astonishment of everybody
who saw it; and what his wife said, when he got home, and of what Joe
Buggles thought about it.
I asked the landlord of an inn up the river once, if it did
not injure him, sometimes, listening to the tales that the fishermen about
there told him; and he said:
"Oh, no; not now, sir. It did used to knock me over a bit at
first, but, lor love you! me and the missus we listens to `em all day now.
It's what you're used to, you know. It's what you're used to."
I knew a young man once, he was a most conscientious fellow,
and, when he took to fly-fishing, he determined never to exaggerate his
hauls by more than twenty-five per cent.
"When I have caught forty fish," said he, "then I will tell
people that I have caught fifty, and so on. But I will not lie any more than
that, because it is sinful to lie."
But the twenty-five per cent. plan did not work well at all.
He never was able to use it. The greatest number of fish he ever caught in
one day was three, and you can't add twenty-five per cent. to three - at
least, not in fish.
So he increased his percentage to thirty-three-and-a-third;
but that, again, was awkward, when he had only caught one or two; so, to
simplify matters, he made up his mind to just double the quantity.
He stuck to this arrangement for a couple of months, and
then he grew dissatisfied with it. Nobody believed him when he told them
that he only doubled, and he, therefore, gained no credit that way whatever,
while his moderation put him at a disadvantage among the other anglers. When
he had really caught three small fish, and said he had caught six, it used
to make him quite jealous to hear a man, whom he knew for a fact had only
caught one, going about telling people he had landed two dozen.
So, eventually, he made one final arrangement with himself,
which he has religiously held to ever since, and that was to count each fish
that he caught as ten, and to assume ten to begin with. For example, if he
did not catch any fish at all, then he said he had caught ten fish - you
could never catch less than ten fish by his system; that was the foundation
of it. Then, if by any chance he really did catch one fish, he called it
twenty, while two fish would count thirty, three forty, and so on.
It is a simple and easily worked plan, and there has been
some talk lately of its being made use of by the angling fraternity in
general. Indeed, the Committee of the Thames Angler's Association did
recommend its adoption about two years ago, but some of the older members
opposed it. They said they would consider the idea if the number were
doubled, and each fish counted as twenty.
If ever you have an evening to spare, up the river, I should
advise you to drop into one of the little village inns, and take a seat in
the tap- room. You will be nearly sure to meet one or two old rod-men,
sipping their toddy there, and they will tell you enough fishy stories, in
half an hour, to give you indigestion for a month.
George and I - I don't know what had become of Harris; he
had gone out and had a shave, early in the afternoon, and had then come back
and spent full forty minutes in pipeclaying his shoes, we had not seen him
since - George and I, therefore, and the dog, left to ourselves, went for a
walk to Wallingford on the second evening, and, coming home, we called in at
a little river-side inn, for a rest, and other things.
We went into the parlour and sat down. There was an old
fellow there, smoking a long clay pipe, and we naturally began chatting.
He told us that it had been a fine day to-day, and we told
him that it had been a fine day yesterday, and then we all told each other
that we thought it would be a fine day to-morrow; and George said the crops
seemed to be coming up nicely.
After that it came out, somehow or other, that we were
strangers in the neighbourhood, and that we were going away the next
morning.
Then a pause ensued in the conversation, during which our
eyes wandered round the room. They finally rested upon a dusty old
glass-case, fixed very high up above the chimney-piece, and containing a
trout. It rather fascinated me, that trout; it was such a monstrous fish. In
fact, at first glance, I thought it was a cod.
"Ah!" said the old gentleman, following the direction of my
gaze, "fine fellow that, ain't he?"
"Quite uncommon," I murmured; and George asked the old man
how much he thought it weighed.
"Eighteen pounds six ounces," said our friend, rising and
taking down his coat. "Yes," he continued, "it wur sixteen year ago, come
the third o' next month, that I landed him. I caught him just below the
bridge with a minnow. They told me he wur in the river, and I said I'd have
him, and so I did. You don't see many fish that size about here now, I'm
thinking. Good-night, gentlemen, good-night."
And out he went, and left us alone.
We could not take our eyes off the fish after that. It
really was a remarkably fine fish. We were still looking at it, when the
local carrier, who had just stopped at the inn, came to the door of the room
with a pot of beer in his hand, and he also looked at the fish.
"Good-sized trout, that," said George, turning round to him.
"Ah! you may well say that, sir," replied the man; and then,
after a pull at his beer, he added, "Maybe you wasn't here, sir, when that
fish was caught?"
"No," we told him. We were strangers in the neighbourhood.
"Ah!" said the carrier, "then, of course, how should you? It
was nearly five years ago that I caught that trout."
"Oh! was it you who caught it, then?" said I.
"Yes, sir," replied the genial old fellow. "I caught him
just below the lock - leastways, what was the lock then - one Friday
afternoon; and the remarkable thing about it is that I caught him with a
fly. I'd gone out pike fishing, bless you, never thinking of a trout, and
when I saw that whopper on the end of my line, blest if it didn't quite take
me aback. Well, you see, he weighed twenty-six pound. Good-night, gentlemen,
good- night."
Five minutes afterwards, a third man came in, and described
how he had caught it early one morning, with bleak; and then he left, and a
stolid, solemn-looking, middle-aged individual came in, and sat down over by
the window.
None of us spoke for a while; but, at length, George turned
to the new comer, and said:
"I beg your pardon, I hope you will forgive the liberty that
we - perfect strangers in the neighbourhood - are taking, but my friend here
and myself would be so much obliged if you would tell us how you caught that
trout up there."
"Why, who told you I caught that trout!" was the surprised
query.
We said that nobody had told us so, but somehow or other we
felt instinctively that it was he who had done it.
"Well, it's a most remarkable thing - most remarkable,"
answered the stolid stranger, laughing; "because, as a matter of fact, you
are quite right. I did catch it. But fancy your guessing it like that. Dear
me, it's really a most remarkable thing."
And then he went on, and told us how it had taken him half
an hour to land it, and how it had broken his rod. He said he had weighed it
carefully when he reached home, and it had turned the scale at thirty- four
pounds.
He went in his turn, and when he was gone, the landlord came
in to us. We told him the various histories we had heard about his trout,
and he was immensely amused, and we all laughed very heartily.
"Fancy Jim Bates and Joe Muggles and Mr. Jones and old Billy
Maunders all telling you that they had caught it. Ha! ha! ha! Well, that is
good," said the honest old fellow, laughing heartily. "Yes, they are the
sort to give it ME, to put up in MY parlour, if THEY had caught it, they
are! Ha! ha! ha!"
And then he told us the real history of the fish. It seemed
that he had caught it himself, years ago, when he was quite a lad; not by
any art or skill, but by that unaccountable luck that appears to always wait
upon a boy when he plays the wag from school, and goes out fishing on a
sunny afternoon, with a bit of string tied on to the end of a tree.
He said that bringing home that trout had saved him from a
whacking, and that even his school-master had said it was worth the
rule-of-three and practice put together.
He was called out of the room at this point, and George and
I again turned our gaze upon the fish.
It really was a most astonishing trout. The more we looked
at it, the more we marvelled at it.
It excited George so much that he climbed up on the back of
a chair to get a better view of it.
And then the chair slipped, and George clutched wildly at
the trout-case to save himself, and down it came with a crash, George and
the chair on top of it.
"You haven't injured the fish, have you?" I cried in alarm,
rushing up.
"I hope not," said George, rising cautiously and looking
about.
But he had. That trout lay shattered into a thousand
fragments - I say a thousand, but they may have only been nine hundred. I
did not count them.
We thought it strange and unaccountable that a stuffed trout
should break up into little pieces like that.
And so it would have been strange and unaccountable, if it
had been a stuffed trout, but it was not.
That trout was plaster-of-Paris.
CHAPTER XVIII.
LOCKS. - GEORGE AND I ARE
PHOTOGRAPHED. - WALLINGFORD. - DORCHESTER. - ABINGDON. - A FAMILY MAN. - A
GOOD SPOT FOR DROWNING. - A DIFFICULT BIT OF WATER. - DEMORALIZING EFFECT OF
RIVER AIR.
WE left Streatley early the next morning, and pulled up to
Culham, and slept under the canvas, in the backwater there.
The river is not extraordinarily interesting between
Streatley and Wallingford. From Cleve you get a stretch of six and a half
miles without a lock. I believe this is the longest uninterrupted stretch
anywhere above Teddington, and the Oxford Club make use of it for their
trial eights.
But however satisfactory this absence of locks may be to
rowing-men, it is to be regretted by the mere pleasure-seeker.
For myself, I am fond of locks. They pleasantly break the
monotony of the pull. I like sitting in the boat and slowly rising out of
the cool depths up into new reaches and fresh views; or sinking down, as it
were, out of the world, and then waiting, while the gloomy gates creak, and
the narrow strip of day-light between them widens till the fair smiling
river lies full before you, and you push your little boat out from its brief
prison on to the welcoming waters once again.
They are picturesque little spots, these locks. The stout
old lock- keeper, or his cheerful-looking wife, or bright-eyed daughter, are
pleasant folk to have a passing chat with. * You meet other boats there, and
river gossip is exchanged. The Thames would not be the fairyland it is
without its flower-decked locks.
* Or rather WERE. The Conservancy of late seems to have
constituted itself into a society for the employment of idiots. A good many
of the new lock-keepers, especially in the more crowded portions of the
river, are excitable, nervous old men, quite unfitted for their post.
Talking of locks reminds me of an accident George and I very
nearly had one summer's morning at Hampton Court.
It was a glorious day, and the lock was crowded; and, as is
a common practice up the river, a speculative photographer was taking a
picture of us all as we lay upon the rising waters.
I did not catch what was going on at first, and was,
therefore, extremely surprised at noticing George hurriedly smooth out his
trousers, ruffle up his hair, and stick his cap on in a rakish manner at the
back of his head, and then, assuming an expression of mingled affability and
sadness, sit down in a graceful attitude, and try to hide his feet.
My first idea was that he had suddenly caught sight of some
girl he knew, and I looked about to see who it was. Everybody in the lock
seemed to have been suddenly struck wooden. They were all standing or
sitting about in the most quaint and curious attitudes I have ever seen off
a Japanese fan. All the girls were smiling. Oh, they did look so sweet! And
all the fellows were frowning, and looking stern and noble.
And then, at last, the truth flashed across me, and I
wondered if I should be in time. Ours was the first boat, and it would be
unkind of me to spoil the man's picture, I thought.
So I faced round quickly, and took up a position in the
prow, where I leant with careless grace upon the hitcher, in an attitude
suggestive of agility and strength. I arranged my hair with a curl over the
forehead, and threw an air of tender wistfulness into my expression, mingled
with a touch of cynicism, which I am told suits me.
As we stood, waiting for the eventful moment, I heard
someone behind call out:
"Hi! look at your nose."
I could not turn round to see what was the matter, and whose
nose it was that was to be looked at. I stole a side-glance at George's
nose! It was all right - at all events, there was nothing wrong with it that
could be altered. I squinted down at my own, and that seemed all that could
be expected also.
"Look at your nose, you stupid ass!" came the same voice
again, louder.
And then another voice cried:
"Push your nose out, can't you, you - you two with the dog!"
Neither George nor I dared to turn round. The man's hand was
on the cap, and the picture might be taken any moment. Was it us they were
calling to? What was the matter with our noses? Why were they to be pushed
out!
But now the whole lock started yelling, and a stentorian
voice from the back shouted:
"Look at your boat, sir; you in the red and black caps. It's
your two corpses that will get taken in that photo, if you ain't quick."
We looked then, and saw that the nose of our boat had got
fixed under the woodwork of the lock, while the in-coming water was rising
all around it, and tilting it up. In another moment we should be over. Quick
as thought, we each seized an oar, and a vigorous blow against the side of
the lock with the butt-ends released the boat, and sent us sprawling on our
backs.
We did not come out well in that photograph, George and I.
Of course, as was to be expected, our luck ordained it, that the man should
set his wretched machine in motion at the precise moment that we were both
lying on our backs with a wild expression of "Where am I? and what is it?"
on our faces, and our four feet waving madly in the air.
Our feet were undoubtedly the leading article in that
photograph. Indeed, very little else was to be seen. They filled up the
foreground entirely. Behind them, you caught glimpses of the other boats,
and bits of the surrounding scenery; but everything and everybody else in
the lock looked so utterly insignificant and paltry compared with our feet,
that all the other people felt quite ashamed of themselves, and refused to
subscribe to the picture.
The owner of one steam launch, who had bespoke six copies,
rescinded the order on seeing the negative. He said he would take them if
anybody could show him his launch, but nobody could. It was somewhere behind
George's right foot.
There was a good deal of unpleasantness over the business.
The photographer thought we ought to take a dozen copies each, seeing that
the photo was about nine-tenths us, but we declined. We said we had no
objection to being photo'd full-length, but we preferred being taken the
right way up.
Wallingford, six miles above Streatley, is a very ancient
town, and has been an active centre for the making of English history. It
was a rude, mud-built town in the time of the Britons, who squatted there,
until the Roman legions evicted them; and replaced their clay-baked walls by
mighty fortifications, the trace of which Time has not yet succeeded in
sweeping away, so well those old-world masons knew how to build.
But Time, though he halted at Roman walls, soon crumbled
Romans to dust; and on the ground, in later years, fought savage Saxons and
huge Danes, until the Normans came.
It was a walled and fortified town up to the time of the
Parliamentary War, when it suffered a long and bitter siege from Fairfax. It
fell at last, and then the walls were razed.
From Wallingford up to Dorchester the neighbourhood of the
river grows more hilly, varied, and picturesque. Dorchester stands half a
mile from the river. It can be reached by paddling up the Thame, if you have
a small boat; but the best way is to leave the river at Day's Lock, and take
a walk across the fields. Dorchester is a delightfully peaceful old place,
nestling in stillness and silence and drowsiness.
Dorchester, like Wallingford, was a city in ancient British
times; it was then called Caer Doren, "the city on the water." In more
recent times the Romans formed a great camp here, the fortifications
surrounding which now seem like low, even hills. In Saxon days it was the
capital of Wessex. It is very old, and it was very strong and great once.
Now it sits aside from the stirring world, and nods and dreams.
Round Clifton Hampden, itself a wonderfully pretty village,
old- fashioned, peaceful, and dainty with flowers, the river scenery is rich
and beautiful. If you stay the night on land at Clifton, you cannot do
better than put up at the "Barley Mow." It is, without exception, I should
say, the quaintest, most old-world inn up the river. It stands on the right
of the bridge, quite away from the village. Its low-pitched gables and
thatched roof and latticed windows give it quite a story-book appearance,
while inside it is even still more once-upon-a-timeyfied.
It would not be a good place for the heroine of a modern
novel to stay at. The heroine of a modern novel is always "divinely tall,"
and she is ever "drawing herself up to her full height." At the "Barley Mow"
she would bump her head against the ceiling each time she did this.
It would also be a bad house for a drunken man to put up at.
There are too many surprises in the way of unexpected steps down into this
room and up into that; and as for getting upstairs to his bedroom, or ever
finding his bed when he got up, either operation would be an utter
impossibility to him.
We were up early the next morning, as we wanted to be in
Oxford by the afternoon. It is surprising how early one can get up, when
camping out. One does not yearn for "just another five minutes" nearly so
much, lying wrapped up in a rug on the boards of a boat, with a Gladstone
bag for a pillow, as one does in a featherbed. We had finished breakfast,
and were through Clifton Lock by half-past eight.
From Clifton to Culham the river banks are flat, monotonous,
and uninteresting, but, after you get through Culhalm Lock - the coldest and
deepest lock on the river - the landscape improves.
At Abingdon, the river passes by the streets. Abingdon is a
typical country town of the smaller order - quiet, eminently respectable,
clean, and desperately dull. It prides itself on being old, but whether it
can compare in this respect with Wallingford and Dorchester seems doubtful.
A famous abbey stood here once, and within what is left of its sanctified
walls they brew bitter ale nowadays.
In St. Nicholas Church, at Abingdon, there is a monument to
John Blackwall and his wife Jane, who both, after leading a happy married
life, died on the very same day, August 21, 1625; and in St. Helen's Church,
it is recorded that W. Lee, who died in 1637, "had in his lifetime issue
from his loins two hundred lacking but three." If you work this out you will
find that Mr. W. Lee's family numbered one hundred and ninety-seven. Mr. W.
Lee - five times Mayor of Abingdon - was, no doubt, a benefactor to his
generation, but I hope there are not many of his kind about in this
overcrowded nineteenth century.
From Abingdon to Nuneham Courteney is a lovely stretch.
Nuneham Park is well worth a visit. It can be viewed on Tuesdays and
Thursdays. The house contains a fine collection of pictures and curiosities,
and the grounds are very beautiful.
The pool under Sandford lasher, just behind the lock, is a
very good place to drown yourself in. The undercurrent is terribly strong,
and if you once get down into it you are all right. An obelisk marks the
spot where two men have already been drowned, while bathing there; and the
steps of the obelisk are generally used as a diving-board by young men now
who wish to see if the place really IS dangerous.
Iffley Lock and Mill, a mile before you reach Oxford, is a
favourite subject with the river-loving brethren of the brush. The real
article, however, is rather disappointing, after the pictures. Few things, I
have noticed, come quite up to the pictures of them, in this world.
We passed through Iffley Lock at about half-past twelve, and
then, having tidied up the boat and made all ready for landing, we set to
work on our last mile.
Between Iffley and Oxford is the most difficult bit of the
river I know. You want to be born on that bit of water, to understand it. I
have been over it a fairish number of times, but I have never been able to
get the hang of it. The man who could row a straight course from Oxford to
Iffley ought to be able to live comfortably, under one roof, with his wife,
his mother-in-law, his elder sister, and the old servant who was in the
family when he was a baby.
First the current drives you on to the right bank, and then
on to the left, then it takes you out into the middle, turns you round three
times, and carries you up stream again, and always ends by trying to smash
you up against a college barge.
Of course, as a consequence of this, we got in the way of a
good many other boats, during the mile, and they in ours, and, of course, as
a consequence of that, a good deal of bad language occurred.
I don't know why it should be, but everybody is always so
exceptionally irritable on the river. Little mishaps, that you would hardly
notice on dry land, drive you nearly frantic with rage, when they occur on
the water. When Harris or George makes an ass of himself on dry land, I
smile indulgently; when they behave in a chuckle-head way on the river, I
use the most blood-curdling language to them. When another boat gets in my
way, I feel I want to take an oar and kill all the people in it.
The mildest tempered people, when on land, become violent
and blood- thirsty when in a boat. I did a little boating once with a young
lady. She was naturally of the sweetest and gentlest disposition imaginable,
but on the river it was quite awful to hear her.
"Oh, drat the man!" she would exclaim, when some unfortunate
sculler would get in her way; "why don't he look where he's going?"
And, "Oh, bother the silly old thing!" she would say
indignantly, when the sail would not go up properly. And she would catch
hold of it, and shake it quite brutally.
Yet, as I have said, when on shore she was kind-hearted and
amiable enough.
The air of the river has a demoralising effect upon one's
temper, and this it is, I suppose, which causes even barge men to be
sometimes rude to one another, and to use language which, no doubt, in their
calmer moments they regret.
CHAPTER XIX.
OXFORD. - MONTMORENCY'S IDEA OF
HEAVEN. - THE HIRED UP-RIVER BOAT, ITS BEAUTIES AND ADVANTAGES. - THE "PRIDE
OF THE THAMES." - THE WEATHER CHANGES. - THE RIVER UNDER DIFFERENT ASPECTS.
- NOT A CHEERFUL EVENING. - YEARNINGS FOR THE UNATTAINABLE. - THE CHEERY
CHAT GOES ROUND. - GEORGE PERFORMS UPON THE BANJO. - A MOURNFUL MELODY. -
ANOTHER WET DAY. - FLIGHT. - A LITTLE SUPPER AND A TOAST.
WE spent two very pleasant days at Oxford. There are plenty
of dogs in the town of Oxford. Montmorency had eleven fights on the first
day, and fourteen on the second, and evidently thought he had got to heaven.
Among folk too constitutionally weak, or too
constitutionally lazy, whichever it may be, to relish up-stream work, it is
a common practice to get a boat at Oxford, and row down. For the energetic,
however, the up- stream journey is certainly to be preferred. It does not
seem good to be always going with the current. There is more satisfaction in
squaring one's back, and fighting against it, and winning one's way forward
in spite of it - at least, so I feel, when Harris and George are sculling
and I am steering.
To those who do contemplate making Oxford their
starting-place, I would say, take your own boat - unless, of course, you can
take someone else's without any possible danger of being found out. The
boats that, as a rule, are let for hire on the Thames above Marlow, are very
good boats. They are fairly water-tight; and so long as they are handled
with care, they rarely come to pieces, or sink. There are places in them to
sit down on, and they are complete with all the necessary arrangements - or
nearly all - to enable you to row them and steer them.
But they are not ornamental. The boat you hire up the river
above Marlow is not the sort of boat in which you can flash about and give
yourself airs. The hired up-river boat very soon puts a stop to any nonsense
of that sort on the part of its occupants. That is its chief - one may say,
its only recommendation.
The man in the hired up-river boat is modest and retiring.
He likes to keep on the shady side, underneath the trees, and to do most of
his travelling early in the morning or late at night, when there are not
many people about on the river to look at him.
When the man in the hired up-river boat sees anyone he
knows, he gets out on to the bank, and hides behind a tree.
I was one of a party who hired an up-river boat one summer,
for a few days' trip. We had none of us ever seen the hired up-river boat
before; and we did not know what it was when we did see it.
We had written for a boat - a double sculling skiff; and
when we went down with our bags to the yard, and gave our names, the man
said:
"Oh, yes; you're the party that wrote for a double sculling
skiff. It's all right. Jim, fetch round THE PRIDE OF THE THAMES."
The boy went, and re-appeared five minutes afterwards,
struggling with an antediluvian chunk of wood, that looked as though it had
been recently dug out of somewhere, and dug out carelessly, so as to have
been unnecessarily damaged in the process.
My own idea, on first catching sight of the object, was that
it was a Roman relic of some sort, - relic of WHAT I do not know, possibly
of a coffin.
The neighbourhood of the upper Thames is rich in Roman
relics, and my surmise seemed to me a very probable one; but our serious
young man, who is a bit of a geologist, pooh-poohed my Roman relic theory,
and said it was clear to the meanest intellect (in which category he seemed
to be grieved that he could not conscientiously include mine) that the thing
the boy had found was the fossil of a whale; and he pointed out to us
various evidences proving that it must have belonged to the preglacial
period.
To settle the dispute, we appealed to the boy. We told him
not to be afraid, but to speak the plain truth: Was it the fossil of a
pre-Adamite whale, or was it an early Roman coffin?
The boy said it was THE PRIDE OF THE THAMES.
We thought this a very humorous answer on the part of the
boy at first, and somebody gave him twopence as a reward for his ready wit;
but when he persisted in keeping up the joke, as we thought, too long, we
got vexed with him.
"Come, come, my lad!" said our captain sharply, "don't let
us have any nonsense. You take your mother's washing-tub home again, and
bring us a boat."
The boat-builder himself came up then, and assured us, on
his word, as a practical man, that the thing really was a boat - was, in
fact, THE boat, the "double sculling skiff" selected to take us on our trip
down the river.
We grumbled a good deal. We thought he might, at least, have
had it whitewashed or tarred - had SOMETHING done to it to distinguish it
from a bit of a wreck; but he could not see any fault in it.
He even seemed offended at our remarks. He said he had
picked us out the best boat in all his stock, and he thought we might have
been more grateful.
He said it, THE PRIDE OF THE THAMES, had been in use, just
as it now stood (or rather as it now hung together), for the last forty
years, to his knowledge, and nobody had complained of it before, and he did
not see why we should be the first to begin.
We argued no more.
We fastened the so-called boat together with some pieces of
string, got a bit of wall-paper and pasted over the shabbier places, said
our prayers, and stepped on board.
They charged us thirty-five shillings for the loan of the
remnant for six days; and we could have bought the thing out-and-out for
four-and- sixpence at any sale of drift-wood round the coast.
The weather changed on the third day, - Oh! I am talking
about our present trip now, - and we started from Oxford upon our homeward
journey in the midst of a steady drizzle.
The river - with the sunlight flashing from its dancing
wavelets, gilding gold the grey-green beech- trunks, glinting through the
dark, cool wood paths, chasing shadows o'er the shallows, flinging diamonds
from the mill-wheels, throwing kisses to the lilies, wantoning with the
weirs' white waters, silvering moss-grown walls and bridges, brightening
every tiny townlet, making sweet each lane and meadow, lying tangled in the
rushes, peeping, laughing, from each inlet, gleaming gay on many a far sail,
making soft the air with glory - is a golden fairy stream.
But the river - chill and weary, with the ceaseless
rain-drops falling on its brown and sluggish waters, with a sound as of a
woman, weeping low in some dark chamber; while the woods, all dark and
silent, shrouded in their mists of vapour, stand like ghosts upon the
margin; silent ghosts with eyes reproachful, like the ghosts of evil
actions, like the ghosts of friends neglected - is a spirit-haunted water
through the land of vain regrets.
Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature. Mother Earth looks at
us with such dull, soulless eyes, when the sunlight has died away from out
of her. It makes us sad to be with her then; she does not seem to know us or
to care for us. She is as a widow who has lost the husband she loved, and
her children touch her hand, and look up into her eyes, but gain no smile
from her.
We rowed on all that day through the rain, and very
melancholy work it was. We pretended, at first, that we enjoyed it. We said
it was a change, and that we liked to see the river under all its different
aspects. We said we could not expect to have it all sunshine, nor should we
wish it. We told each other that Nature was beautiful, even in her tears.
Indeed, Harris and I were quite enthusiastic about the
business, for the first few hours. And we sang a song about a gipsy's life,
and how delightful a gipsy's existence was! - free to storm and sunshine,
and to every wind that blew! - and how he enjoyed the rain, and what a lot
of good it did him; and how he laughed at people who didn't like it.
George took the fun more soberly, and stuck to the umbrella.
We hoisted the cover before we had lunch, and kept it up all
the afternoon, just leaving a little space in the bow, from which one of us
could paddle and keep a look-out. In this way we made nine miles, and pulled
up for the night a little below Day's Lock.
I cannot honestly say that we had a merry evening. The rain
poured down with quiet persistency. Everything in the boat was damp and
clammy. Supper was not a success. Cold veal pie, when you don't feel hungry,
is apt to cloy. I felt I wanted whitebait and a cutlet; Harris babbled of
soles and white-sauce, and passed the remains of his pie to Montmorency, who
declined it, and, apparently insulted by the offer, went and sat over at the
other end of the boat by himself.
George requested that we would not talk about these things,
at all events until he had finished his cold boiled beef without mustard.
We played penny nap after supper. We played for about an
hour and a half, by the end of which time George had won fourpence - George
always is lucky at cards - and Harris and I had lost exactly twopence each.
We thought we would give up gambling then. As Harris said,
it breeds an unhealthy excitement when carried too far. George offered to go
on and give us our revenge; but Harris and I decided not to battle any
further against Fate.
After that, we mixed ourselves some toddy, and sat round and
talked. George told us about a man he had known, who had come up the river
two years ago and who had slept out in a damp boat on just such another
night as that was, and it had given him rheumatic fever, and nothing was
able to save him, and he had died in great agony ten days afterwards. George
said he was quite a young man, and was engaged to be married. He said it was
one of the saddest things he had ever known.
And that put Harris in mind of a friend of his, who had been
in the Volunteers, and who had slept out under canvas one wet night down at
Aldershot, "on just such another night as this," said Harris; and he had
woke up in the morning a cripple for life. Harris said he would introduce us
both to the man when we got back to town; it would make our hearts bleed to
see him.
This naturally led to some pleasant chat about sciatica,
fevers, chills, lung diseases, and bronchitis; and Harris said how very
awkward it would be if one of us were taken seriously ill in the night,
seeing how far away we were from a doctor.
There seemed to be a desire for something frolicksome to
follow upon this conversation, and in a weak moment I suggested that George
should get out his banjo, and see if he could not give us a comic song.
I will say for George that he did not want any pressing.
There was no
nonsense about having left his music at home, or anything of that sort.
He at once fished out his instrument, and commenced to play "Two Lovely
Black Eyes."
I had always regarded "Two Lovely Black Eyes" as rather a
commonplace tune until that evening. The rich vein of sadness that George
extracted from it quite surprised me.
The desire that grew upon Harris and myself, as the mournful
strains progressed, was to fall upon each other's necks and weep; but by
great effort we kept back the rising tears, and listened to the wild
yearnful melody in silence.
When the chorus came we even made a desperate effort to be
merry. We re- filled our glasses and joined in; Harris, in a voice trembling
with emotion, leading, and George and I following a few words behind:
"Two lovely black eyes;
Oh! what a surprise!
Only for telling a man he was wrong,
Two - "
There we broke down. The unutterable
pathos of George's accompaniment to that "two" we were, in our then state of
depression, unable to bear. Harris sobbed like a little child, and the dog
howled till I thought his heart or his jaw must surely break.
George wanted to go on with another verse. He thought that
when he had got a little more into the tune, and could throw more "abandon,"
as it were, into the rendering, it might not seem so sad. The feeling of the
majority, however, was opposed to the experiment.
There being nothing else to do, we went to bed - that is, we
undressed ourselves, and tossed about at the bottom of the boat for some
three or four hours. After which, we managed to get some fitful slumber
until five a.m., when we all got up and had breakfast.
The second day was exactly like the first. The rain
continued to pour down, and we sat, wrapped up in our mackintoshes,
underneath the canvas, and drifted slowly down.
One of us - I forget which one now, but I rather think it
was myself - made a few feeble attempts during the course of the morning to
work up the old gipsy foolishness about being children of Nature and
enjoying the wet; but it did not go down well at all. That -
"I care not for the rain, not I!"
was so painfully evident, as
expressing the sentiments of each of us, that to sing it seemed unnecessary.
On one point we were all agreed, and that was that, come
what might, we would go through with this job to the bitter end. We had come
out for a fortnight's enjoyment on the river, and a fortnight's enjoyment on
the river we meant to have. If it killed us! well, that would be a sad thing
for our friends and relations, but it could not be helped. We felt that to
give in to the weather in a climate such as ours would be a most disastrous
precedent.
"It's only two days more," said Harris, "and we are young
and strong. We may get over it all right, after all."
At about four o'clock we began to discuss our arrangements
for the evening. We were a little past Goring then, and we decided to paddle
on to Pangbourne, and put up there for the night.
"Another jolly evening!" murmured George.
We sat and mused on the prospect. We should be in at
Pangbourne by five. We should finish dinner at, say, half-past six. After
that we could walk about the village in the pouring rain until bed-time; or
we could sit in a dimly-lit bar-parlour and read the almanac.
"Why, the Alhambra would be almost more lively," said
Harris, venturing his head outside the cover for a moment and taking a
survey of the sky.
"With a little supper at the - * to follow," I added, half
unconsciously.
* A capital little out-of-the-way restaurant, in the
neighbourhood of - , where you can get one of the best-cooked and cheapest
little French dinners or suppers that I know of, with an excellent bottle of
Beaune, for three-and-six; and which I am not going to be idiot enough to
advertise.
"Yes it's almost a pity we've made up our minds to stick to
this boat," answered Harris; and then there was silence for a while.
"If we HADN'T made up our minds to contract our certain
deaths in this bally old coffin," observed George, casting a glance of
intense malevolence over the boat, "it might be worth while to mention that
there's a train leaves Pangbourne, I know, soon after five, which would just
land us in town in comfortable time to get a chop, and then go on to the
place you mentioned afterwards."
Nobody spoke. We looked at one another, and each one seemed
to see his own mean and guilty thoughts reflected in the faces of the
others. In silence, we dragged out and overhauled the Gladstone. We looked
up the river and down the river; not a soul was in sight!
Twenty minutes later, three figures, followed by a
shamed-looking dog, might have been seen creeping stealthily from the
boat-house at the "Swan" towards the railway station, dressed in the
following neither neat nor gaudy costume:
Black leather shoes, dirty; suit of boating flannels, very
dirty; brown felt hat, much battered; mackintosh, very wet; umbrella.
We had deceived the boatman at Pangbourne. We had not had
the face to tell him that we were running away from the rain. We had left
the boat, and all it contained, in his charge, with instructions that it was
to be ready for us at nine the next morning. If, we said - IF anything
unforeseen should happen, preventing our return, we would write to him.
We reached Paddington at seven, and drove direct to the
restaurant I have before described, where we partook of a light meal, left
Montmorency, together with suggestions for a supper to be ready at half-past
ten, and then continued our way to Leicester Square.
We attracted a good deal of attention at the Alhambra. On
our presenting ourselves at the paybox we were gruffly directed to go round
to Castle Street, and were informed that we were half-an-hour behind our
time.
We convinced the man, with some difficulty, that we were NOT
"the world- renowned contortionists from the Himalaya Mountains," and he
took our money and let us pass.
Inside we were a still greater success. Our fine bronzed
countenances and picturesque clothes were followed round the place with
admiring gaze. We were the cynosure of every eye.
It was a proud moment for us all.
We adjourned soon after the first ballet, and wended our way
back to the restaurant, where supper was already awaiting us.
I must confess to enjoying that supper. For about ten days
we seemed to have been living, more or less, on nothing but cold meat, cake,
and bread and jam. It had been a simple, a nutritious diet; but there had
been nothing exciting about it, and the odour of Burgundy, and the smell of
French sauces, and the sight of clean napkins and long loaves, knocked as a
very welcome visitor at the door of our inner man.
We pegged and quaffed away in silence for a while, until the
time came when, instead of sitting bolt upright, and grasping the knife and
fork firmly, we leant back in our chairs and worked slowly and carelessly -
when we stretched out our legs beneath the table, let our napkins fall,
unheeded, to the floor, and found time to more critically examine the smoky
ceiling than we had hitherto been able to do - when we rested our glasses at
arm's-length upon the table, and felt good, and thoughtful, and forgiving.
Then Harris, who was sitting next the window, drew aside the
curtain and looked out upon the street.
It glistened darkly in the wet, the dim lamps flickered with
each gust, the rain splashed steadily into the puddles and trickled down the
water- spouts into the running gutters. A few soaked wayfarers hurried past,
crouching beneath their dripping umbrellas, the women holding up their
skirts.
"Well," said Harris, reaching his hand out for his glass,
"we have had a pleasant trip, and my hearty thanks for it to old Father
Thames - but I think we did well to chuck it when we did. Here's to Three
Men well out of a Boat!"
And Montmorency, standing on his hind legs, before the
window, peering out into the night, gave a short bark of decided concurrence
with the toast.
