We came downstairs one at a time, walking softly, and keeping the shady
side. We asked the servant for our hats and coats in whispers, and
opened the door for ourselves, and slipped out, and got round the corner
quickly, avoiding each other as much as possible.
I have never taken much interest in German songs since then.
We reached Sunbury Lock at half-past three. The river is sweetly pretty
just there before you come to the gates, and the backwater is charming;
but don't attempt to row up it.
I tried to do so once. I was sculling, and asked the fellows who were
steering if they thought it could be done, and they said, oh, yes, they
thought so, if I pulled hard. We were just under the little foot-bridge
that crosses it between the two weirs, when they said this, and I bent
down over the sculls, and set myself up, and pulled.
I pulled splendidly. I got well into a steady rhythmical swing. I put
my arms, and my legs, and my back into it. I set myself a good, quick,
dashing stroke, and worked in really grand style. My two friends said it
was a pleasure to watch me. At the end of five minutes, I thought we
ought to be pretty near the weir, and I looked up. We were under the
bridge, in exactly the same spot that we were when I began, and there
were those two idiots, injuring themselves by violent laughing. I had
been grinding away like mad to keep that boat stuck still under that
bridge. I let other people pull up backwaters against strong streams
now.
We sculled up to Walton, a rather large place for a riverside town. As
with all riverside places, only the tiniest corner of it comes down to
the water, so that from the boat you might fancy it was a village of some
half-dozen houses, all told. Windsor and Abingdon are the only towns
between London and Oxford that you can really see anything of from the
stream. All the others hide round corners, and merely peep at the river
down one street: my thanks to them for being so considerate, and leaving
the river-banks to woods and fields and water-works.
Even Reading, though it does its best to spoil and sully and make hideous
as much of the river as it can reach, is good-natured enough to keep its
ugly face a good deal out of sight.
Caesar, of course, had a little place at Walton - a camp, or an
entrenchment, or something of that sort. Caesar was a regular up-river
man. Also Queen Elizabeth, she was there, too. You can never get away
from that woman, go where you will. Cromwell and Bradshaw (not the guide
man, but the King Charles's head man) likewise sojourned here. They must
have been quite a pleasant little party, altogether.
There is an iron "scold's bridle" in Walton Church. They used these
things in ancient days for curbing women's tongues. They have given up
the attempt now. I suppose iron was getting scarce, and nothing else
would be strong enough.
There are also tombs of note in the church, and I was afraid I should
never get Harris past them; but he didn't seem to think of them, and we
went on. Above the bridge the river winds tremendously. This makes it
look picturesque; but it irritates you from a towing or sculling point of
view, and causes argument between the man who is pulling and the man who
is steering.
You pass Oatlands Park on the right bank here. It is a famous old place.
Henry VIII. stole it from some one or the other, I forget whom now, and
lived in it. There is a grotto in the park which you can see for a fee,
and which is supposed to be very wonderful; but I cannot see much in it
myself. The late Duchess of York, who lived at Oatlands, was very fond
of dogs, and kept an immense number. She had a special graveyard made,
in which to bury them when they died, and there they lie, about fifty of
them, with a tombstone over each, and an epitaph inscribed thereon.
Well, I dare say they deserve it quite as much as the average Christian
does.
At "Corway Stakes" - the first bend above Walton Bridge - was fought a
battle between Caesar and Cassivelaunus. Cassivelaunus had prepared the
river for Caesar, by planting it full of stakes (and had, no doubt, put
up a notice-board). But Caesar crossed in spite of this. You couldn't
choke Caesar off that river. He is the sort of man we want round the
backwaters now.
Halliford and Shepperton are both pretty little spots where they touch
the river; but there is nothing remarkable about either of them. There
is a tomb in Shepperton churchyard, however, with a poem on it, and I was
nervous lest Harris should want to get out and fool round it. I saw him
fix a longing eye on the landing-stage as we drew near it, so I managed,
by an adroit movement, to jerk his cap into the water, and in the
excitement of recovering that, and his indignation at my clumsiness, he
forgot all about his beloved graves.
At Weybridge, the Wey (a pretty little stream, navigable for small boats
up to Guildford, and one which I have always been making up my mind to
explore, and never have), the Bourne, and the Basingstoke Canal all enter
the Thames together. The lock is just opposite the town, and the first
thing that we saw, when we came in view of it, was George's blazer on one
of the lock gates, closer inspection showing that George was inside it.
Montmorency set up a furious barking, I shrieked, Harris roared; George
waved his hat, and yelled back. The lock-keeper rushed out with a drag,
under the impression that somebody had fallen into the lock, and appeared
annoyed at finding that no one had.
George had rather a curious oilskin-covered parcel in his hand. It was
round and flat at one end, with a long straight handle sticking out of
it.
"What's that?" said Harris - "a frying-pan?"
"No," said George, with a strange, wild look glittering in his eyes;
"they are all the rage this season; everybody has got them up the river.
It's a banjo."
"I never knew you played the banjo!" cried Harris and I, in one breath.
"Not exactly," replied George: "but it's very easy, they tell me; and
I've got the instruction book!"
CHAPTER IX.
GEORGE IS INTRODUCED TO WORK. - HEATHENISH INSTINCTS OF TOW-LINES. -
UNGRATEFUL CONDUCT OF A DOUBLE-SCULLING SKIFF. - TOWERS AND TOWED. - A
USE DISCOVERED FOR LOVERS. - STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF AN ELDERLY LADY. -
MUCH HASTE, LESS SPEED. - BEING TOWED BY GIRLS: EXCITING SENSATION. - THE
MISSING LOCK OR THE HAUNTED RIVER. - MUSIC. - SAVED!
WE made George work, now we had got him. He did not want to work, of
course; that goes without saying. He had had a hard time in the City, so
he explained. Harris, who is callous in his nature, and not prone to
pity, said:
"Ah! and now you are going to have a hard time on the river for a change;
change is good for everyone. Out you get!"
He could not in conscience - not even George's conscience - object,
though he did suggest that, perhaps, it would be better for him to stop
in the boat, and get tea ready, while Harris and I towed, because getting
tea was such a worrying work, and Harris and I looked tired. The only
reply we made to this, however, was to pass him over the tow-line, and he
took it, and stepped out.
There is something very strange and unaccountable about a tow-line. You
roll it up with as much patience and care as you would take to fold up a
new pair of trousers, and five minutes afterwards, when you pick it up,
it is one ghastly, soul-revolting tangle.
I do not wish to be insulting, but I firmly believe that if you took an
average tow-line, and stretched it out straight across the middle of a
field, and then turned your back on it for thirty seconds, that, when you
looked round again, you would find that it had got itself altogether in a
heap in the middle of the field, and had twisted itself up, and tied
itself into knots, and lost its two ends, and become all loops; and it
would take you a good half-hour, sitting down there on the grass and
swearing all the while, to disentangle it again.
That is my opinion of tow-lines in general. Of course, there may be
honourable exceptions; I do not say that there are not. There may be
tow-lines that are a credit to their profession - conscientious,
respectable tow-lines - tow-lines that do not imagine they are crochet-
work, and try to knit themselves up into antimacassars the instant they
are left to themselves. I say there MAY be such tow-lines; I sincerely
hope there are. But I have not met with them.
This tow-line I had taken in myself just before we had got to the lock.
I would not let Harris touch it, because he is careless. I had looped it
round slowly and cautiously, and tied it up in the middle, and folded it
in two, and laid it down gently at the bottom of the boat. Harris had
lifted it up scientifically, and had put it into George's hand. George
had taken it firmly, and held it away from him, and had begun to unravel
it as if he were taking the swaddling clothes off a new-born infant; and,
before he had unwound a dozen yards, the thing was more like a badly-made
door-mat than anything else.
It is always the same, and the same sort of thing always goes on in
connection with it. The man on the bank, who is trying to disentangle
it, thinks all the fault lies with the man who rolled it up; and when a
man up the river thinks a thing, he says it.
"What have you been trying to do with it, make a fishing-net of it?
You've made a nice mess you have; why couldn't you wind it up properly,
you silly dummy?" he grunts from time to time as he struggles wildly with
it, and lays it out flat on the tow-path, and runs round and round it,
trying to find the end.
On the other hand, the man who wound it up thinks the whole cause of the
muddle rests with the man who is trying to unwind it.
"It was all right when you took it!" he exclaims indignantly. "Why don't
you think what you are doing? You go about things in such a slap-dash
style. You'd get a scaffolding pole entangled you would!"
And they feel so angry with one another that they would like to hang each
other with the thing.
Ten minutes go by, and the first man gives a yell and goes mad, and
dances on the rope, and tries to pull it straight by seizing hold of the
first piece that comes to his hand and hauling at it. Of course, this
only gets it into a tighter tangle than ever. Then the second man climbs
out of the boat and comes to help him, and they get in each other's way,
and hinder one another. They both get hold of the same bit of line, and
pull at it in opposite directions, and wonder where it is caught. In the
end, they do get it clear, and then turn round and find that the boat has
drifted off, and is making straight for the weir.
This really happened once to my own knowledge. It was up by Boveney, one
rather windy morning. We were pulling down stream, and, as we came round
the bend, we noticed a couple of men on the bank. They were looking at
each other with as bewildered and helplessly miserable expression as I
have ever witnessed on any human countenance before or since, and they
held a long tow-line between them. It was clear that something had
happened, so we eased up and asked them what was the matter.
"Why, our boat's gone off!" they replied in an indignant tone. "We just
got out to disentangle the tow-line, and when we looked round, it was
gone!"
And they seemed hurt at what they evidently regarded as a mean and
ungrateful act on the part of the boat.
We found the truant for them half a mile further down, held by some
rushes, and we brought it back to them.
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