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.