To put an end to the matter, we went upstairs, and asked the traffic
superintendent, and he told us that he had just met a man, who said he
had seen it at number three platform. We went to number three platform,
but the authorities there said that they rather thought that train was
the Southampton express, or else the Windsor loop. But they were sure it
wasn't the Kingston train, though why they were sure it wasn't they
couldn't say.
Then our porter said he thought that must be it on the high-level
platform; said he thought he knew the train. So we went to the high-
level platform, and saw the engine-driver, and asked him if he was going
to Kingston. He said he couldn't say for certain of course, but that he
rather thought he was. Anyhow, if he wasn't the 11.5 for Kingston, he
said he was pretty confident he was the 9.32 for Virginia Water, or the
10 a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, or somewhere in that direction,
and we should all know when we got there. We slipped half-a-crown into
his hand, and begged him to be the 11.5 for Kingston.
"Nobody will ever know, on this line," we said, "what you are, or where
you're going. You know the way, you slip off quietly and go to
Kingston."
"Well, I don't know, gents," replied the noble fellow, "but I suppose
SOME train's got to go to Kingston; and I'll do it. Gimme the half-
crown."
Thus we got to Kingston by the London and South-Western Railway.
We learnt, afterwards, that the train we had come by was really the
Exeter mail, and that they had spent hours at Waterloo, looking for it,
and nobody knew what had become of it.
Our boat was waiting for us at Kingston just below bridge, and to it we
wended our way, and round it we stored our luggage, and into it we
stepped.
"Are you all right, sir?" said the man.
"Right it is," we answered; and with Harris at the sculls and I at the
tiller-lines, and Montmorency, unhappy and deeply suspicious, in the
prow, out we shot on to the waters which, for a fortnight, were to be our
home.
CHAPTER VI.
KINGSTON. - INSTRUCTIVE REMARKS ON EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. - INSTRUCTIVE
OBSERVATIONS ON CARVED OAK AND LIFE IN GENERAL. - SAD CASE OF STIVVINGS,
JUNIOR. - MUSINGS ON ANTIQUITY. - I FORGET THAT I AM STEERING. -
INTERESTING RESULT. - HAMPTON COURT MAZE. - HARRIS AS A GUIDE.
IT was a glorious morning, late spring or early summer, as you care to
take it, when the dainty sheen of grass and leaf is blushing to a deeper
green; and the year seems like a fair young maid, trembling with strange,
wakening pulses on the brink of womanhood.
The quaint back streets of Kingston, where they came down to the water's
edge, looked quite picturesque in the flashing sunlight, the glinting
river with its drifting barges, the wooded towpath, the trim-kept villas
on the other side, Harris, in a red and orange blazer, grunting away at
the sculls, the distant glimpses of the grey old palace of the Tudors,
all made a sunny picture, so bright but calm, so full of life, and yet so
peaceful, that, early in the day though it was, I felt myself being
dreamily lulled off into a musing fit.
I mused on Kingston, or "Kyningestun," as it was once called in the days
when Saxon "kinges" were crowned there. Great Caesar crossed the river
there, and the Roman legions camped upon its sloping uplands. Caesar,
like, in later years, Elizabeth, seems to have stopped everywhere: only
he was more respectable than good Queen Bess; he didn't put up at the
public-houses.
She was nuts on public-houses, was England's Virgin Queen. There's
scarcely a pub. of any attractions within ten miles of London that she
does not seem to have looked in at, or stopped at, or slept at, some time
or other. I wonder now, supposing Harris, say, turned over a new leaf,
and became a great and good man, and got to be Prime Minister, and died,
if they would put up signs over the public-houses that he had patronised:
"Harris had a glass of bitter in this house;" "Harris had two of Scotch
cold here in the summer of `88;" "Harris was chucked from here in
December, 1886."
No, there would be too many of them! It would be the houses that he had
never entered that would become famous. "Only house in South London that
Harris never had a drink in!" The people would flock to it to see what
could have been the matter with it.
How poor weak-minded King Edwy must have hated Kyningestun! The
coronation feast had been too much for him. Maybe boar's head stuffed
with sugar-plums did not agree with him (it wouldn't with me, I know),
and he had had enough of sack and mead; so he slipped from the noisy
revel to steal a quiet moonlight hour with his beloved Elgiva.
Perhaps, from the casement, standing hand-in-hand, they were watching the
calm moonlight on the river, while from the distant halls the boisterous
revelry floated in broken bursts of faint-heard din and tumult.
Then brutal Odo and St. Dunstan force their rude way into the quiet room,
and hurl coarse insults at the sweet-faced Queen, and drag poor Edwy back
to the loud clamour of the drunken brawl.
Years later, to the crash of battle-music, Saxon kings and Saxon revelry
were buried side by side, and Kingston's greatness passed away for a
time, to rise once more when Hampton Court became the palace of the
Tudors and the Stuarts, and the royal barges strained at their moorings
on the river's bank, and bright-cloaked gallants swaggered down the
water-steps to cry:
