Three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog)
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!”