The river - with the sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets, gilding
gold the grey-green beech- trunks, glinting through the dark, cool wood
paths, chasing shadows o'er the shallows, flinging diamonds from the
mill-wheels, throwing kisses to the lilies, wantoning with the weirs'
white waters, silvering moss-grown walls and bridges, brightening every
tiny townlet, making sweet each lane and meadow, lying tangled in the
rushes, peeping, laughing, from each inlet, gleaming gay on many a far
sail, making soft the air with glory - is a golden fairy stream.
But the river - chill and weary, with the ceaseless rain-drops falling on
its brown and sluggish waters, with a sound as of a woman, weeping low in
some dark chamber; while the woods, all dark and silent, shrouded in
their mists of vapour, stand like ghosts upon the margin; silent ghosts
with eyes reproachful, like the ghosts of evil actions, like the ghosts
of friends neglected - is a spirit-haunted water through the land of vain
regrets.
Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature. Mother Earth looks at us with such
dull, soulless eyes, when the sunlight has died away from out of her. It
makes us sad to be with her then; she does not seem to know us or to care
for us. She is as a widow who has lost the husband she loved, and her
children touch her hand, and look up into her eyes, but gain no smile
from her.
We rowed on all that day through the rain, and very melancholy work it
was. We pretended, at first, that we enjoyed it. We said it was a
change, and that we liked to see the river under all its different
aspects. We said we could not expect to have it all sunshine, nor should
we wish it. We told each other that Nature was beautiful, even in her
tears.
Indeed, Harris and I were quite enthusiastic about the business, for the
first few hours. And we sang a song about a gipsy's life, and how
delightful a gipsy's existence was! - free to storm and sunshine, and to
every wind that blew! - and how he enjoyed the rain, and what a lot of
good it did him; and how he laughed at people who didn't like it.
George took the fun more soberly, and stuck to the umbrella.
We hoisted the cover before we had lunch, and kept it up all the
afternoon, just leaving a little space in the bow, from which one of us
could paddle and keep a look-out. In this way we made nine miles, and
pulled up for the night a little below Day's Lock.
I cannot honestly say that we had a merry evening. The rain poured down
with quiet persistency. Everything in the boat was damp and clammy.
Supper was not a success. Cold veal pie, when you don't feel hungry, is
apt to cloy. I felt I wanted whitebait and a cutlet; Harris babbled of
soles and white-sauce, and passed the remains of his pie to Montmorency,
who declined it, and, apparently insulted by the offer, went and sat over
at the other end of the boat by himself.
George requested that we would not talk about these things, at all events
until he had finished his cold boiled beef without mustard.
We played penny nap after supper. We played for about an hour and a
half, by the end of which time George had won fourpence - George always
is lucky at cards - and Harris and I had lost exactly twopence each.
We thought we would give up gambling then. As Harris said, it breeds an
unhealthy excitement when carried too far. George offered to go on and
give us our revenge; but Harris and I decided not to battle any further
against Fate.
After that, we mixed ourselves some toddy, and sat round and talked.
George told us about a man he had known, who had come up the river two
years ago and who had slept out in a damp boat on just such another night
as that was, and it had given him rheumatic fever, and nothing was able
to save him, and he had died in great agony ten days afterwards. George
said he was quite a young man, and was engaged to be married. He said it
was one of the saddest things he had ever known.
And that put Harris in mind of a friend of his, who had been in the
Volunteers, and who had slept out under canvas one wet night down at
Aldershot, "on just such another night as this," said Harris; and he had
woke up in the morning a cripple for life. Harris said he would
introduce us both to the man when we got back to town; it would make our
hearts bleed to see him.
This naturally led to some pleasant chat about sciatica, fevers, chills,
lung diseases, and bronchitis; and Harris said how very awkward it would
be if one of us were taken seriously ill in the night, seeing how far
away we were from a doctor.
There seemed to be a desire for something frolicksome to follow upon this
conversation, and in a weak moment I suggested that George should get out
his banjo, and see if he could not give us a comic song.
I will say for George that he did not want any pressing. There was no
nonsense about having left his music at home, or anything of that sort.
He at once fished out his instrument, and commenced to play "Two Lovely
Black Eyes."
I had always regarded "Two Lovely Black Eyes" as rather a commonplace
tune until that evening. The rich vein of sadness that George extracted
from it quite surprised me.
