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