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Title: Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)

Author: Jerome K. Jerome

Release date: August 1, 1995 [eBook #308]
                Most recently updated: November 9, 2022

Language: English

Credits: David Price and Margaret Price


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE MEN IN A BOAT (TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG) ***




                           THREE MEN IN A BOAT
                      (_TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG_).


                                * * * * *

                                    BY
                             JEROME K. JEROME

                                AUTHOR OF
                    “IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW,”
                            “STAGE LAND,” ETC.

                      Illustrations by A. Frederics.

                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]

                                 BRISTOL
                     J. W. ARROWSMITH, 11 QUAY STREET

                                  LONDON
             SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. LIMITED

                                * * * * *

                                   1889
                          _All rights reserved_




PREFACE.


_The chief beauty of this book lies not so much in its literary style_,
_or in the extent and usefulness of the information it conveys_, _as
in its simple truthfulness_. _Its pages form the record of events
that really happened_. _All that has been done is to colour them_;
_and_, _for this_, _no extra charge has been made_. _George and
Harris and Montmorency are not poetic ideals_, _but things of flesh
and blood—especially George_, _who weighs about twelve stone_. _Other
works may excel this in depth of thought and knowledge of human nature:
other books may rival it in originality and size_; _but_, _for hopeless
and incurable veracity_, _nothing yet discovered can surpass it_.
_This_, _more than all its other charms_, _will_, _it is felt_, _make
the volume precious in the eye of the earnest reader_; _and will lend
additional weight to the lesson that the story teaches_.

LONDON, _August_, 1889.

             [Picture: Graphic of three men in a rowing boat]




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.

[Picture: Man reading book] 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.

[Picture: Man with walking stick] 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?”

[Picture: Man feeling ill] “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.

[Picture: Montmorency] 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.

                          [Picture: River scene]

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.

[Picture: Mermaid] 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.

[Picture: Whisky glass] 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.

[Picture: Candle] “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.

[Picture: Nails etc.] “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.”

                [Picture: Uncle Podger admiring his work]

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
Æolian 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.

[Picture: Tent] “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.

[Picture: Sea-side scene] 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.

                       [Picture: Railway carriage]

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.

[Picture: Boot] 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
10.05 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.

                    [Picture: Luggage with dog on top]




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.

[Picture: Mrs. Poppets] 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.”

[Picture: George snoring] 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.

[Picture: Two dogs and umbrella] 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 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.

                          [Picture: The luggage]

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 Cæsar crossed the
river there, and the Roman legions camped upon its sloping uplands.
Cæsar, 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 Cæsar! 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 manœuvre 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?

[Picture: China dog] 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.

[Picture: People at Hampton Maze] 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.

[Picture: Young lady] 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.

                          [Picture: Washing up]

“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?”

[Picture: Graves] “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.

[Picture: Harris] 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 of_ “_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.

Cæsar, of course, had a little place at Walton—a camp, or an
entrenchment, or something of that sort. Cæsar 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 Cæsar and Cassivelaunus. Cassivelaunus had prepared the
river for Cæsar, by planting it full of stakes (and had, no doubt, put
up a notice-board). But Cæsar crossed in spite of this. You couldn’t
choke Cæsar 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!”

                     [Picture: George and the banjo]




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.

[Picture: Dog wrapped in tow-line] 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.

[Picture: Hat in the water] “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.

                [Picture: Two people towing, boat adrift]

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.”

[Picture: Lady pinning up frock] 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.

                     [Picture: People in rowing boat]




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.

[Picture: Watching and waiting] 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.”

[Picture: Smoking pipes] 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.

[Picture: George and the policeman] “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.

[Picture: In the Thames] 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.”

                          [Picture: River scene]

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.

[Picture: Flattened tin] 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.

                          [Picture: River scene]

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.”

                           [Picture: The boat]




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!

[Picture: Bisham Abbey] 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.

[Picture: Cat] 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?”

[Picture: The bring of the provisions] 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.

[Picture: The dog] 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.”

[Picture: Rescuing 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.

[Picture: Montmorency and the kettle] “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—

[Picture: Swans] “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.

[Picture: Woman at housework] 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.

[Picture: Two novices in a boat]

“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.

[Picture: Man and pole] 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 a 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.

[Picture: Bathing] 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.

                      [Picture: Woman in the water]

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.

[Picture: Washing line] 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.

[Picture: The trout] 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. {287} You meet other
boats there, and river gossip is exchanged. The Thames would not be the
fairyland it is without its flower-decked locks.

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.

[Picture: The photograph] 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.

                          [Picture: River scene]

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.

[Picture: Man at the lock] [Picture: Man at the lock] 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.

[Picture: Dog running] 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.

[Picture: Dogs fighting] 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.

[Picture: Dog running] 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.

[Picture: Dog] 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:

[Picture: The Pride of the Thames] “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.

                     [Picture: The boat in the rain]

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.

[Picture: Lady in skirt] “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 --- {311} to follow,” I added, half
unconsciously.

“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.

                   [Picture: Neptune drinking a toast]




Footnotes.


{287} 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.

{311} 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.






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