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