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