They lay upon straw, and they rose at midnight to mass. They
spent the day in labour, reading, and prayer; and over all their lives
there fell a silence as of death, for no one spoke.
A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had
made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them - the soft
singing of the waters, the whisperings of the river grass, the music of
the rushing wind - should not have taught them a truer meaning of life
than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence,
waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn
night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.
From Medmenham to sweet Hambledon Lock the river is full of peaceful
beauty, but, after it passes Greenlands, the rather uninteresting looking
river residence of my newsagent - a quiet unassuming old gentleman, who
may often be met with about these regions, during the summer months,
sculling himself along in easy vigorous style, or chatting genially to
some old lock-keeper, as he passes through - until well the other side of
Henley, it is somewhat bare and dull.
We got up tolerably early on the Monday morning at Marlow, and went for a
bathe before breakfast; and, coming back, Montmorency made an awful ass
of himself. The only subject on which Montmorency and I have any serious
difference of opinion is cats. I like cats; Montmorency does not.
When I meet a cat, I say, "Poor Pussy!" and stop down and tickle the side
of its head; and the cat sticks up its tail in a rigid, cast-iron manner,
arches its back, and wipes its nose up against my trousers; and all is
gentleness and peace. When Montmorency meets a cat, the whole street
knows about it; and there is enough bad language wasted in ten seconds to
last an ordinarily respectable man all his life, with care.
I do not blame the dog (contenting myself, as a rule, with merely
clouting his head or throwing stones at him), because I take it that it
is his nature. Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much
original sin in them as other dogs are, and it will take years and years
of patient effort on the part of us Christians to bring about any
appreciable reformation in the rowdiness of the fox-terrier nature.
I remember being in the lobby of the Haymarket Stores one day, and all
round about me were dogs, waiting for the return of their owners, who
were shopping inside. There were a mastiff, and one or two collies, and
a St. Bernard, a few retrievers and Newfoundlands, a boar-hound, a French
poodle, with plenty of hair round its head, but mangy about the middle; a
bull-dog, a few Lowther Arcade sort of animals, about the size of rats,
and a couple of Yorkshire tykes.
There they sat, patient, good, and thoughtful. A solemn peacefulness
seemed to reign in that lobby. An air of calmness and resignation - of
gentle sadness pervaded the room.
Then a sweet young lady entered, leading a meek-looking little fox-
terrier, and left him, chained up there, between the bull-dog and the
poodle. He sat and looked about him for a minute. Then he cast up his
eyes to the ceiling, and seemed, judging from his expression, to be
thinking of his mother. Then he yawned. Then he looked round at the
other dogs, all silent, grave, and dignified.
He looked at the bull-dog, sleeping dreamlessly on his right. He looked
at the poodle, erect and haughty, on his left. Then, without a word of
warning, without the shadow of a provocation, he bit that poodle's near
fore-leg, and a yelp of agony rang through the quiet shades of that
lobby.
The result of his first experiment seemed highly satisfactory to him, and
he determined to go on and make things lively all round. He sprang over
the poodle and vigorously attacked a collie, and the collie woke up, and
immediately commenced a fierce and noisy contest with the poodle. Then
Foxey came back to his own place, and caught the bull-dog by the ear, and
tried to throw him away; and the bull-dog, a curiously impartial animal,
went for everything he could reach, including the hall-porter, which gave
that dear little terrier the opportunity to enjoy an uninterrupted fight
of his own with an equally willing Yorkshire tyke.
Anyone who knows canine nature need hardly, be told that, by this time,
all the other dogs in the place were fighting as if their hearths and
homes depended on the fray. The big dogs fought each other
indiscriminately; and the little dogs fought among themselves, and filled
up their spare time by biting the legs of the big dogs.
The whole lobby was a perfect pandemonium, and the din was terrific. A
crowd assembled outside in the Haymarket, and asked if it was a vestry
meeting; or, if not, who was being murdered, and why? Men came with
poles and ropes, and tried to separate the dogs, and the police were sent
for.
And in the midst of the riot that sweet young lady returned, and snatched
up that sweet little dog of hers (he had laid the tyke up for a month,
and had on the expression, now, of a new-born lamb) into her arms, and
kissed him, and asked him if he was killed, and what those great nasty
brutes of dogs had been doing to him; and he nestled up against her, and
gazed up into her face with a look that seemed to say:
