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