<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
<p class="gutsumm">Plans discussed.—Pleasures of
“camping-out,” on fine nights.—Ditto, wet
nights.—Compromise decided on.—Montmorency, first
impressions of.—Fears lest he is too good for this world,
fears subsequently dismissed as groundless.—Meeting
adjourns.</p>
<p>We pulled out the maps, and discussed plans.</p>
<p>We arranged to start on the following Saturday from
Kingston. Harris and I would go down in the morning, and
take the boat up to Chertsey, and George, who would not be able
to get away from the City till the afternoon (George goes to
sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when
they wake him up and put him outside at two), would meet us
there.</p>
<p>Should we “camp out” or sleep at inns?</p>
<p>George and I were for camping out. We said it would be
so wild and free, so patriarchal like.</p>
<p>Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts
of the cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children,
the birds have ceased their song, and only the moorhen’s
plaintive cry and the harsh croak of the corncrake stirs the awed
hush around the couch of waters, where the dying day breathes out
her last.</p>
<p>From the dim woods on either bank, Night’s ghostly army,
the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away
the lingering rear-guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless,
unseen feet, above the waving river-grass, and through the
sighing rushes; and Night, upon her sombre throne, folds her
black wings above the darkening world, and, from her phantom
palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<SPAN href="images/p20.jpg">
<ANTIMG alt= "River scene" title= "River scene" src="images/p20.jpg" /></SPAN></p>
<p>Then we run our little boat into some quiet nook, and the tent
is pitched, and the frugal supper cooked and eaten. Then
the big pipes are filled and lighted, and the pleasant chat goes
round in musical undertone; while, in the pauses of our talk, the
river, playing round the boat, prattles strange old tales and
secrets, sings low the old child’s song that it has sung so
many thousand years—will sing so many thousand years to
come, before its voice grows harsh and old—a song that we,
who have learnt to love its changing face, who have so often
nestled on its yielding bosom, think, somehow, we understand,
though we could not tell you in mere words the story that we
listen to.</p>
<p>And we sit there, by its margin, while the moon, who loves it
too, stoops down to kiss it with a sister’s kiss, and
throws her silver arms around it clingingly; and we watch it as
it flows, ever singing, ever whispering, out to meet its king,
the sea—till our voices die away in silence, and the pipes
go out—till we, common-place, everyday young men enough,
feel strangely full of thoughts, half sad, half sweet, and do not
care or want to speak—till we laugh, and, rising, knock the
ashes from our burnt-out pipes, and say “Good-night,”
and, lulled by the lapping water and the rustling trees, we fall
asleep beneath the great, still stars, and dream that the world
is young again—young and sweet as she used to be ere the
centuries of fret and care had furrowed her fair face, ere her
children’s sins and follies had made old her loving
heart—sweet as she was in those bygone days when, a
new-made mother, she nursed us, her children, upon her own deep
breast—ere the wiles of painted civilization had lured us
away from her fond arms, and the poisoned sneers of artificiality
had made us ashamed of the simple life we led with her, and the
simple, stately home where mankind was born so many thousands
years ago.</p>
<p>Harris said:</p>
<p>“How about when it rained?”</p>
<p>You can never rouse Harris. There is no poetry about
Harris—no wild yearning for the unattainable. Harris
never “weeps, he knows not why.” If
Harris’s eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because
Harris has been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcester
over his chop.</p>
<p><SPAN href="images/p22b.jpg">
<ANTIMG class='floatleft' alt= "Mermaid" title= "Mermaid" src="images/p22s.jpg" /></SPAN>If you were to stand at night by the sea-shore with Harris,
and say:</p>
<p>“Hark! do you not hear? Is it but the mermaids
singing deep below the waving waters; or sad spirits, chanting
dirges for white corpses, held by seaweed?” Harris
would take you by the arm, and say:</p>
<p>“I know what it is, old man; you’ve got a
chill. Now, you come along with me. I know a place
round the corner here, where you can get a drop of the finest
Scotch whisky you ever tasted—put you right in less than no
time.”</p>
<p>Harris always does know a place round the corner where you can
get something brilliant in the drinking line. I believe
that if you met Harris up in Paradise (supposing such a thing
likely), he would immediately greet you with:</p>
<p>“So glad you’ve come, old fellow; I’ve found
a nice place round the corner here, where you can get some really
first-class nectar.”</p>
<p>In the present instance, however, as regarded the camping out,
his practical view of the matter came as a very timely
hint. Camping out in rainy weather is not pleasant.</p>
<p>It is evening. You are wet through, and there is a good
two inches of water in the boat, and all the things are
damp. You find a place on the banks that is not quite so
puddly as other places you have seen, and you land and lug out
the tent, and two of you proceed to fix it.</p>
<p>It is soaked and heavy, and it flops about, and tumbles down
on you, and clings round your head and makes you mad. The
rain is pouring steadily down all the time. It is difficult
enough to fix a tent in dry weather: in wet, the task becomes
herculean. Instead of helping you, it seems to you that the
other man is simply playing the fool. Just as you get your
side beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end, and
spoils it all.</p>
<p>“Here! what are you up to?” you call out.</p>
<p>“What are <i>you</i> up to?” he retorts;
“leggo, can’t you?”</p>
<p>“Don’t pull it; you’ve got it all wrong, you
stupid ass!” you shout.</p>
<p>“No, I haven’t,” he yells back; “let
go your side!”</p>
<p>“I tell you you’ve got it all wrong!” you
roar, wishing that you could get at him; and you give your ropes
a lug that pulls all his pegs out.</p>
<p>“Ah, the bally idiot!” you hear him mutter to
himself; and then comes a savage haul, and away goes your
side. You lay down the mallet and start to go round and
tell him what you think about the whole business, and, at the
same time, he starts round in the same direction to come and
explain his views to you. And you follow each other round
and round, swearing at one another, until the tent tumbles down
in a heap, and leaves you looking at each other across its ruins,
when you both indignantly exclaim, in the same breath:</p>
<p>“There you are! what did I tell you?”</p>
<p>Meanwhile the third man, who has been baling out the boat, and
who has spilled the water down his sleeve, and has been cursing
away to himself steadily for the last ten minutes, wants to know
what the thundering blazes you’re playing at, and why the
blarmed tent isn’t up yet.</p>
<p>At last, somehow or other, it does get up, and you land the
things. It is hopeless attempting to make a wood fire, so
you light the methylated spirit stove, and crowd round that.</p>
<p>Rainwater is the chief article of diet at supper. The
bread is two-thirds rainwater, the beefsteak-pie is exceedingly
rich in it, and the jam, and the butter, and the salt, and the
coffee have all combined with it to make soup.</p>
<p>After supper, you find your tobacco is damp, and you cannot
smoke. Luckily you have a bottle of the stuff that cheers
and inebriates, if taken in proper quantity, and this restores to
you sufficient interest in life to induce you to go to bed.</p>
<p>There you dream that an elephant has suddenly sat down on your
chest, and that the volcano has exploded and thrown you down to
the bottom of the sea—the elephant still sleeping
peacefully on your bosom. You wake up and grasp the idea
that something terrible really has happened. Your first
impression is that the end of the world has come; and then you
think that this cannot be, and that it is thieves and murderers,
or else fire, and this opinion you express in the usual
method. No help comes, however, and all you know is that
thousands of people are kicking you, and you are being
smothered.</p>
<p>Somebody else seems in trouble, too. You can hear his
faint cries coming from underneath your bed. Determining,
at all events, to sell your life dearly, you struggle
frantically, hitting out right and left with arms and legs, and
yelling lustily the while, and at last something gives way, and
you find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off, you
dimly observe a half-dressed ruffian, waiting to kill you, and
you are preparing for a life-and-death struggle with him, when it
begins to dawn upon you that it’s Jim.</p>
<p>“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he says, recognising
you at the same moment.</p>
<p>“Yes,” you answer, rubbing your eyes;
“what’s happened?”</p>
<p>“Bally tent’s blown down, I think,” he
says. “Where’s Bill?”</p>
<p>Then you both raise up your voices and shout for
“Bill!” and the ground beneath you heaves and rocks,
and the muffled voice that you heard before replies from out the
ruin:</p>
<p>“Get off my head, can’t you?”</p>
<p>And Bill struggles out, a muddy, trampled wreck, and in an
unnecessarily aggressive mood—he being under the evident
belief that the whole thing has been done on purpose.</p>
<p>In the morning you are all three speechless, owing to having
caught severe colds in the night; you also feel very quarrelsome,
and you swear at each other in hoarse whispers during the whole
of breakfast time.</p>
<p>We therefore decided that we would sleep out on fine nights;
and hotel it, and inn it, and pub. it, like respectable folks,
when it was wet, or when we felt inclined for a change.</p>
<p>Montmorency hailed this compromise with much approval.
He does not revel in romantic solitude. Give him something
noisy; and if a trifle low, so much the jollier. To look at
Montmorency you would imagine that he was an angel sent upon the
earth, for some reason withheld from mankind, in the shape of a
small fox-terrier. There is a sort of
Oh-what-a-wicked-world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-something-to-make-it-better-and-nobler
expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring the
tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen.</p>
<p>When first he came to live at my expense, I never thought I
should be able to get him to stop long. I used to sit down
and look at him, as he sat on the rug and looked up at me, and
think: “Oh, that dog will never live. He will be
snatched up to the bright skies in a chariot, that is what will
happen to him.”</p>
<p>But, when I had paid for about a dozen chickens that he had
killed; and had dragged him, growling and kicking, by the scruff
of his neck, out of a hundred and fourteen street fights; and had
had a dead cat brought round for my inspection by an irate
female, who called me a murderer; and had been summoned by the
man next door but one for having a ferocious dog at large, that
had kept him pinned up in his own tool-shed, afraid to venture
his nose outside the door for over two hours on a cold night; and
had learned that the gardener, unknown to myself, had won thirty
shillings by backing him to kill rats against time, then I began
to think that maybe they’d let him remain on earth for a
bit longer, after all.</p>
<p>To hang about a stable, and collect a gang of the most
disreputable dogs to be found in the town, and lead them out to
march round the slums to fight other disreputable dogs, is
Montmorency’s idea of “life;” and so, as I
before observed, he gave to the suggestion of inns, and pubs.,
and hotels his most emphatic approbation.</p>
<p>Having thus settled the sleeping arrangements to the
satisfaction of all four of us, the only thing left to discuss
was what we should take with us; and this we had begun to argue,
when Harris said he’d had enough oratory for one night, and
proposed that we should go out and have a smile, saying that he
had found a place, round by the square, where you could really
get a drop of Irish worth drinking.</p>
<p><SPAN href="images/p29b.jpg">
<ANTIMG class='floatright' alt= "Whisky glass" title= "Whisky glass" src="images/p29s.jpg" /></SPAN>George said he felt thirsty (I never knew George when he
didn’t); and, as I had a presentiment that a little whisky,
warm, with a slice of lemon, would do my complaint good, the
debate was, by common assent, adjourned to the following night;
and the assembly put on its hats and went out.</p>
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