<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
<p class="gutsumm">Henry VIII. and Anne
Boleyn.—Disadvantages of living in same house with pair of
lovers.—A trying time for the English nation.—A night
search for the picturesque.—Homeless and
houseless.—Harris prepares to die.—An angel comes
along.—Effect of sudden joy on Harris.—A little
supper.—Lunch.—High price for mustard.—A
fearful battle.—Maidenhead.—Sailing.—Three
fishers.—We are cursed.</p>
<p>I was sitting on the bank, conjuring up this scene to myself,
when George remarked that when I was quite rested, perhaps I
would not mind helping to wash up; and, thus recalled from the
days of the glorious past to the prosaic present, with all its
misery and sin, I slid down into the boat and cleaned out the
frying-pan with a stick of wood and a tuft of grass, polishing it
up finally with George’s wet shirt.</p>
<p>We went over to Magna Charta Island, and had a look at the
stone which stands in the cottage there and on which the great
Charter is said to have been signed; though, as to whether it
really was signed there, or, as some say, on the other bank at
“Runningmede,” I decline to commit myself. As
far as my own personal opinion goes, however, I am inclined to
give weight to the popular island theory. Certainly, had I
been one of the Barons, at the time, I should have strongly urged
upon my comrades the advisability of our getting such a slippery
customer as King John on to the island, where there was less
chance of surprises and tricks.</p>
<p>There are the ruins of an old priory in the grounds of
Ankerwyke House, which is close to Picnic Point, and it was round
about the grounds of this old priory that Henry VIII. is said to
have waited for and met Anne Boleyn. He also used to meet
her at Hever Castle in Kent, and also somewhere near St.
Albans. It must have been difficult for the people of
England in those days to have found a spot where these
thoughtless young folk were <i>not</i> spooning.</p>
<p>Have you ever been in a house where there are a couple
courting? It is most trying. You think you will go
and sit in the drawing-room, and you march off there. As
you open the door, you hear a noise as if somebody had suddenly
recollected something, and, when you get in, Emily is over by the
window, full of interest in the opposite side of the road, and
your friend, John Edward, is at the other end of the room with
his whole soul held in thrall by photographs of other
people’s relatives.</p>
<p>“Oh!” you say, pausing at the door, “I
didn’t know anybody was here.”</p>
<p>“Oh! didn’t you?” says Emily, coldly, in a
tone which implies that she does not believe you.</p>
<p>You hang about for a bit, then you say:</p>
<p>“It’s very dark. Why don’t you light
the gas?”</p>
<p>John Edward says, “Oh!” he hadn’t noticed
it; and Emily says that papa does not like the gas lit in the
afternoon.</p>
<p>You tell them one or two items of news, and give them your
views and opinions on the Irish question; but this does not
appear to interest them. All they remark on any subject is,
“Oh!” “Is it?” “Did
he?” “Yes,” and “You don’t say
so!” And, after ten minutes of such style of
conversation, you edge up to the door, and slip out, and are
surprised to find that the door immediately closes behind you,
and shuts itself, without your having touched it.</p>
<p>Half an hour later, you think you will try a pipe in the
conservatory. The only chair in the place is occupied by
Emily; and John Edward, if the language of clothes can be relied
upon, has evidently been sitting on the floor. They do not
speak, but they give you a look that says all that can be said in
a civilised community; and you back out promptly and shut the
door behind you.</p>
<p>You are afraid to poke your nose into any room in the house
now; so, after walking up and down the stairs for a while, you go
and sit in your own bedroom. This becomes uninteresting,
however, after a time, and so you put on your hat and stroll out
into the garden. You walk down the path, and as you pass
the summer-house you glance in, and there are those two young
idiots, huddled up into one corner of it; and they see you, and
are evidently under the idea that, for some wicked purpose of
your own, you are following them about.</p>
<p>“Why don’t they have a special room for this sort
of thing, and make people keep to it?” you mutter; and you
rush back to the hall and get your umbrella and go out.</p>
<p>It must have been much like this when that foolish boy Henry
VIII. was courting his little Anne. People in
Buckinghamshire would have come upon them unexpectedly when they
were mooning round Windsor and Wraysbury, and have exclaimed,
“Oh! you here!” and Henry would have blushed and
said, “Yes; he’d just come over to see a man;”
and Anne would have said, “Oh, I’m so glad to see
you! Isn’t it funny? I’ve just met Mr.
Henry VIII. in the lane, and he’s going the same way I
am.”</p>
<p>Then those people would have gone away and said to themselves:
“Oh! we’d better get out of here while this billing
and cooing is on. We’ll go down to Kent.”</p>
<p>And they would go to Kent, and the first thing they would see
in Kent, when they got there, would be Henry and Anne fooling
round Hever Castle.</p>
<p>“Oh, drat this!” they would have said.
“Here, let’s go away. I can’t stand any
more of it. Let’s go to St. Albans—nice quiet
place, St. Albans.”</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<SPAN href="images/p185b.jpg">
<ANTIMG alt= "River scene" title= "River scene" src="images/p185s.jpg" /></SPAN></p>
<p>And when they reached St. Albans, there would be that wretched
couple, kissing under the Abbey walls. Then these folks
would go and be pirates until the marriage was over.</p>
<p>From Picnic Point to Old Windsor Lock is a delightful bit of
the river. A shady road, dotted here and there with dainty
little cottages, runs by the bank up to the “Bells of
Ouseley,” a picturesque inn, as most up-river inns are, and
a place where a very good glass of ale may be drunk—so
Harris says; and on a matter of this kind you can take
Harris’s word. Old Windsor is a famous spot in its
way. Edward the Confessor had a palace here, and here the
great Earl Godwin was proved guilty by the justice of that age of
having encompassed the death of the King’s brother.
Earl Godwin broke a piece of bread and held it in his hand.</p>
<p>“If I am guilty,” said the Earl, “may this
bread choke me when I eat it!”</p>
<p>Then he put the bread into his mouth and swallowed it, and it
choked him, and he died.</p>
<p>After you pass Old Windsor, the river is somewhat
uninteresting, and does not become itself again until you are
nearing Boveney. George and I towed up past the Home Park,
which stretches along the right bank from Albert to Victoria
Bridge; and as we were passing Datchet, George asked me if I
remembered our first trip up the river, and when we landed at
Datchet at ten o’clock at night, and wanted to go to
bed.</p>
<p>I answered that I did remember it. It will be some time
before I forget it.</p>
<p>It was the Saturday before the August Bank Holiday. We
were tired and hungry, we same three, and when we got to Datchet
we took out the hamper, the two bags, and the rugs and coats, and
such like things, and started off to look for diggings. We
passed a very pretty little hotel, with clematis and creeper over
the porch; but there was no honeysuckle about it, and, for some
reason or other, I had got my mind fixed on honeysuckle, and I
said:</p>
<p>“Oh, don’t let’s go in there!
Let’s go on a bit further, and see if there isn’t one
with honeysuckle over it.”</p>
<p>So we went on till we came to another hotel. That was a
very nice hotel, too, and it had honey-suckle on it, round at the
side; but Harris did not like the look of a man who was leaning
against the front door. He said he didn’t look a nice
man at all, and he wore ugly boots: so we went on further.
We went a goodish way without coming across any more hotels, and
then we met a man, and asked him to direct us to a few.</p>
<p>He said:</p>
<p>“Why, you are coming away from them. You must turn
right round and go back, and then you will come to the
Stag.”</p>
<p>We said:</p>
<p>“Oh, we had been there, and didn’t like
it—no honeysuckle over it.”</p>
<p>“Well, then,” he said, “there’s the
Manor House, just opposite. Have you tried that?”</p>
<p>Harris replied that we did not want to go
there—didn’t like the looks of a man who was stopping
there—Harris did not like the colour of his hair,
didn’t like his boots, either.</p>
<p>“Well, I don’t know what you’ll do,
I’m sure,” said our informant; “because they
are the only two inns in the place.”</p>
<p>“No other inns!” exclaimed Harris.</p>
<p>“None,” replied the man.</p>
<p>“What on earth are we to do?” cried Harris.</p>
<p>Then George spoke up. He said Harris and I could get an
hotel built for us, if we liked, and have some people made to put
in. For his part, he was going back to the Stag.</p>
<p>The greatest minds never realise their ideals in any matter;
and Harris and I sighed over the hollowness of all earthly
desires, and followed George.</p>
<p>We took our traps into the Stag, and laid them down in the
hall.</p>
<p>The landlord came up and said:</p>
<p>“Good evening, gentlemen.”</p>
<p>“Oh, good evening,” said George; “we want
three beds, please.”</p>
<p>“Very sorry, sir,” said the landlord; “but
I’m afraid we can’t manage it.”</p>
<p>“Oh, well, never mind,” said George, “two
will do. Two of us can sleep in one bed, can’t
we?” he continued, turning to Harris and me.</p>
<p>Harris said, “Oh, yes;” he thought George and I
could sleep in one bed very easily.</p>
<p>“Very sorry, sir,” again repeated the landlord:
“but we really haven’t got a bed vacant in the whole
house. In fact, we are putting two, and even three
gentlemen in one bed, as it is.”</p>
<p>This staggered us for a bit.</p>
<p>But Harris, who is an old traveller, rose to the occasion,
and, laughing cheerily, said:</p>
<p>“Oh, well, we can’t help it. We must rough
it. You must give us a shake-down in the
billiard-room.”</p>
<p>“Very sorry, sir. Three gentlemen sleeping on the
billiard-table already, and two in the coffee-room.
Can’t possibly take you in to-night.”</p>
<p>We picked up our things, and went over to the Manor
House. It was a pretty little place. I said I thought
I should like it better than the other house; and Harris said,
“Oh, yes,” it would be all right, and we
needn’t look at the man with the red hair; besides, the
poor fellow couldn’t help having red hair.</p>
<p>Harris spoke quite kindly and sensibly about it.</p>
<p>The people at the Manor House did not wait to hear us
talk. The landlady met us on the doorstep with the greeting
that we were the fourteenth party she had turned away within the
last hour and a half. As for our meek suggestions of
stables, billiard-room, or coal-cellars, she laughed them all to
scorn: all these nooks had been snatched up long ago.</p>
<p>Did she know of any place in the whole village where we could
get shelter for the night?</p>
<p>“Well, if we didn’t mind roughing it—she did
not recommend it, mind—but there was a little beershop half
a mile down the Eton road—”</p>
<p>We waited to hear no more; we caught up the hamper and the
bags, and the coats and rugs, and parcels, and ran. The
distance seemed more like a mile than half a mile, but we reached
the place at last, and rushed, panting, into the bar.</p>
<p>The people at the beershop were rude. They merely
laughed at us. There were only three beds in the whole
house, and they had seven single gentlemen and two married
couples sleeping there already. A kind-hearted bargeman,
however, who happened to be in the tap-room, thought we might try
the grocer’s, next door to the Stag, and we went back.</p>
<p>The grocer’s was full. An old woman we met in the
shop then kindly took us along with her for a quarter of a mile,
to a lady friend of hers, who occasionally let rooms to
gentlemen.</p>
<p>This old woman walked very slowly, and we were twenty minutes
getting to her lady friend’s. She enlivened the
journey by describing to us, as we trailed along, the various
pains she had in her back.</p>
<p>Her lady friend’s rooms were let. From there we
were recommended to No. 27. No. 27 was full, and sent us to
No. 32, and 32 was full.</p>
<p>Then we went back into the high road, and Harris sat down on
the hamper and said he would go no further. He said it
seemed a quiet spot, and he would like to die there. He
requested George and me to kiss his mother for him, and to tell
all his relations that he forgave them and died happy.</p>
<p>At that moment an angel came by in the disguise of a small boy
(and I cannot think of any more effective disguise an angel could
have assumed), with a can of beer in one hand, and in the other
something at the end of a string, which he let down on to every
flat stone he came across, and then pulled up again, this
producing a peculiarly unattractive sound, suggestive of
suffering.</p>
<p>We asked this heavenly messenger (as we discovered him
afterwards to be) if he knew of any lonely house, whose occupants
were few and feeble (old ladies or paralysed gentlemen
preferred), who could be easily frightened into giving up their
beds for the night to three desperate men; or, if not this, could
he recommend us to an empty pigstye, or a disused limekiln, or
anything of that sort. He did not know of any such
place—at least, not one handy; but he said that, if we
liked to come with him, his mother had a room to spare, and could
put us up for the night.</p>
<p>We fell upon his neck there in the moonlight and blessed him,
and it would have made a very beautiful picture if the boy
himself had not been so over-powered by our emotion as to be
unable to sustain himself under it, and sunk to the ground,
letting us all down on top of him. Harris was so overcome
with joy that he fainted, and had to seize the boy’s
beer-can and half empty it before he could recover consciousness,
and then he started off at a run, and left George and me to bring
on the luggage.</p>
<p>It was a little four-roomed cottage where the boy lived, and
his mother—good soul!—gave us hot bacon for supper,
and we ate it all—five pounds—and a jam tart
afterwards, and two pots of tea, and then we went to bed.
There were two beds in the room; one was a 2ft. 6in. truckle bed,
and George and I slept in that, and kept in by tying ourselves
together with a sheet; and the other was the little boy’s
bed, and Harris had that all to himself, and we found him, in the
morning, with two feet of bare leg sticking out at the bottom,
and George and I used it to hang the towels on while we
bathed.</p>
<p>We were not so uppish about what sort of hotel we would have,
next time we went to Datchet.</p>
<p>To return to our present trip: nothing exciting happened, and
we tugged steadily on to a little below Monkey Island, where we
drew up and lunched. We tackled the cold beef for lunch,
and then we found that we had forgotten to bring any
mustard. I don’t think I ever in my life, before or
since, felt I wanted mustard as badly as I felt I wanted it
then. I don’t care for mustard as a rule, and it is
very seldom that I take it at all, but I would have given worlds
for it then.</p>
<p>I don’t know how many worlds there may be in the
universe, but anyone who had brought me a spoonful of mustard at
that precise moment could have had them all. I grow
reckless like that when I want a thing and can’t get
it.</p>
<p>Harris said he would have given worlds for mustard too.
It would have been a good thing for anybody who had come up to
that spot with a can of mustard, then: he would have been set up
in worlds for the rest of his life.</p>
<p>But there! I daresay both Harris and I would have tried
to back out of the bargain after we had got the mustard.
One makes these extravagant offers in moments of excitement, but,
of course, when one comes to think of it, one sees how absurdly
out of proportion they are with the value of the required
article. I heard a man, going up a mountain in Switzerland,
once say he would give worlds for a glass of beer, and, when he
came to a little shanty where they kept it, he kicked up a most
fearful row because they charged him five francs for a bottle of
Bass. He said it was a scandalous imposition, and he wrote
to the <i>Times</i> about it.</p>
<p>It cast a gloom over the boat, there being no mustard.
We ate our beef in silence. Existence seemed hollow and
uninteresting. We thought of the happy days of childhood,
and sighed. We brightened up a bit, however, over the
apple-tart, and, when George drew out a tin of pine-apple from
the bottom of the hamper, and rolled it into the middle of the
boat, we felt that life was worth living after all.</p>
<p>We are very fond of pine-apple, all three of us. We
looked at the picture on the tin; we thought of the juice.
We smiled at one another, and Harris got a spoon ready.</p>
<p>Then we looked for the knife to open the tin with. We
turned out everything in the hamper. We turned out the
bags. We pulled up the boards at the bottom of the
boat. We took everything out on to the bank and shook
it. There was no tin-opener to be found.</p>
<p>Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and
broke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of
scissors, and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye
out. While they were dressing their wounds, I tried to make
a hole in the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and the
hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat and the bank
into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, uninjured,
and broke a teacup.</p>
<p>Then we all got mad. We took that tin out on the bank,
and Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I
went back into the boat and brought out the mast, and George held
the tin and Harris held the sharp end of his stone against the
top of it, and I took the mast and poised it high up in the air,
and gathered up all my strength and brought it down.</p>
<p>It was George’s straw hat that saved his life that
day. He keeps that hat now (what is left of it), and, of a
winter’s evening, when the pipes are lit and the boys are
telling stretchers about the dangers they have passed through,
George brings it down and shows it round, and the stirring tale
is told anew, with fresh exaggerations every time.</p>
<p>Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.</p>
<p>After that, I took the tin off myself, and hammered at it with
the mast till I was worn out and sick at heart, whereupon Harris
took it in hand.</p>
<p><SPAN href="images/p196b.jpg">
<ANTIMG class='floatleft' alt= "Flattened tin" title= "Flattened tin" src="images/p196s.jpg" /></SPAN>We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered it
into every form known to geometry—but we could not make a
hole in it. Then George went at it, and knocked it into a
shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild
hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away the
mast. Then we all three sat round it on the grass and
looked at it.</p>
<p>There was one great dent across the top that had the
appearance of a mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so that
Harris rushed at the thing, and caught it up, and flung it far
into the middle of the river, and as it sank we hurled our curses
at it, and we got into the boat and rowed away from the spot, and
never paused till we reached Maidenhead.</p>
<p>Maidenhead itself is too snobby to be pleasant. It is
the haunt of the river swell and his overdressed female
companion. It is the town of showy hotels, patronised
chiefly by dudes and ballet girls. It is the witch’s
kitchen from which go forth those demons of the
river—steam-launches. The <i>London Journal</i> duke
always has his “little place” at Maidenhead; and the
heroine of the three-volume novel always dines there when she
goes out on the spree with somebody else’s husband.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<SPAN href="images/p197b.jpg">
<ANTIMG alt= "River scene" title= "River scene" src="images/p197s.jpg" /></SPAN></p>
<p>We went through Maidenhead quickly, and then eased up, and
took leisurely that grand reach beyond Boulter’s and
Cookham locks. Clieveden Woods still wore their dainty
dress of spring, and rose up, from the water’s edge, in one
long harmony of blended shades of fairy green. In its
unbroken loveliness this is, perhaps, the sweetest stretch of all
the river, and lingeringly we slowly drew our little boat away
from its deep peace.</p>
<p>We pulled up in the backwater, just below Cookham, and had
tea; and, when we were through the lock, it was evening. A
stiffish breeze had sprung up—in our favour, for a wonder;
for, as a rule on the river, the wind is always dead against you
whatever way you go. It is against you in the morning, when
you start for a day’s trip, and you pull a long distance,
thinking how easy it will be to come back with the sail.
Then, after tea, the wind veers round, and you have to pull hard
in its teeth all the way home.</p>
<p>When you forget to take the sail at all, then the wind is
consistently in your favour both ways. But there! this
world is only a probation, and man was born to trouble as the
sparks fly upward.</p>
<p>This evening, however, they had evidently made a mistake, and
had put the wind round at our back instead of in our face.
We kept very quiet about it, and got the sail up quickly before
they found it out, and then we spread ourselves about the boat in
thoughtful attitudes, and the sail bellied out, and strained, and
grumbled at the mast, and the boat flew.</p>
<p>I steered.</p>
<p>There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than
sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to
yet—except in dreams. The wings of the rushing wind
seem to be bearing you onward, you know not where. You are
no longer the slow, plodding, puny thing of clay, creeping
tortuously upon the ground; you are a part of Nature! Your
heart is throbbing against hers! Her glorious arms are
round you, raising you up against her heart! Your spirit is
at one with hers; your limbs grow light! The voices of the
air are singing to you. The earth seems far away and
little; and the clouds, so close above your head, are brothers,
and you stretch your arms to them.</p>
<p>We had the river to ourselves, except that, far in the
distance, we could see a fishing-punt, moored in mid-stream, on
which three fishermen sat; and we skimmed over the water, and
passed the wooded banks, and no one spoke.</p>
<p>I was steering.</p>
<p>As we drew nearer, we could see that the three men fishing
seemed old and solemn-looking men. They sat on three chairs
in the punt, and watched intently their lines. And the red
sunset threw a mystic light upon the waters, and tinged with fire
the towering woods, and made a golden glory of the piled-up
clouds. It was an hour of deep enchantment, of ecstatic
hope and longing. The little sail stood out against the
purple sky, the gloaming lay around us, wrapping the world in
rainbow shadows; and, behind us, crept the night.</p>
<p>We seemed like knights of some old legend, sailing across some
mystic lake into the unknown realm of twilight, unto the great
land of the sunset.</p>
<p>We did not go into the realm of twilight; we went slap into
that punt, where those three old men were fishing. We did
not know what had happened at first, because the sail shut out
the view, but from the nature of the language that rose up upon
the evening air, we gathered that we had come into the
neighbourhood of human beings, and that they were vexed and
discontented.</p>
<p>Harris let the sail down, and then we saw what had
happened. We had knocked those three old gentlemen off
their chairs into a general heap at the bottom of the boat, and
they were now slowly and painfully sorting themselves out from
each other, and picking fish off themselves; and as they worked,
they cursed us—not with a common cursory curse, but with
long, carefully-thought-out, comprehensive curses, that embraced
the whole of our career, and went away into the distant future,
and included all our relations, and covered everything connected
with us—good, substantial curses.</p>
<p>Harris told them they ought to be grateful for a little
excitement, sitting there fishing all day, and he also said that
he was shocked and grieved to hear men their age give way to
temper so.</p>
<p>But it did not do any good.</p>
<p>George said he would steer, after that. He said a mind
like mine ought not to be expected to give itself away in
steering boats—better let a mere commonplace human being
see after that boat, before we jolly well all got drowned; and he
took the lines, and brought us up to Marlow.</p>
<p>And at Marlow we left the boat by the bridge, and went and put
up for the night at the “Crown.”</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<SPAN href="images/p201b.jpg">
<ANTIMG alt= "The boat" title= "The boat" src="images/p201s.jpg" /></SPAN></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />