CHAPTER XII.


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.

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.

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.

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 NOT spooning.

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.

"Oh!" you say, pausing at the door, "I didn't know anybody was here."

"Oh! didn't you?" says Emily, coldly, in a tone which implies that she
does not believe you.

You hang about for a bit, then you say:

"It's very dark. Why don't you light the gas?"

John Edward says, "Oh!" he hadn't noticed it; and Emily says that papa
does not like the gas lit in the afternoon.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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."

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."

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.

"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."

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.

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.

"If I am guilty," said the Earl, "may this bread choke me when I eat it!"

Then he put the bread into his mouth and swallowed it, and it choked him,
and he died.

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.

I answered that I did remember it. It will be some time before I forget
it.

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:

"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."

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.

He said:

"Why, you are coming away from them. You must turn right round and go
back, and then you will come to the Stag."

We said:

"Oh, we had been there, and didn't like it - no honeysuckle over it."

"Well, then," he said, "there's the Manor House, just opposite. Have you
tried that?"

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.

"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."

"No other inns!" exclaimed Harris.

"None," replied the man.

"What on earth are we to do?" cried Harris.

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.

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.

We took our traps into the Stag, and laid them down in the hall.

The landlord came up and said:

"Good evening, gentlemen."

"Oh, good evening," said George; "we want three beds, please."

"Very sorry, sir," said the landlord; "but I'm afraid we can't manage
it."

"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.

Harris said, "Oh, yes;" he thought George and I could sleep in one bed
very easily.

"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."

This staggered us for a bit.

But Harris, who is an old traveller, rose to the occasion, and, laughing
cheerily, said:

"Oh, well, we can't help it. We must rough it. You must give us a
shake-down in the billiard-room."

"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."

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.

Harris spoke quite kindly and sensibly about it.

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.

Did she know of any place in the whole village where we could get shelter
for the night?

"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 - "

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We were not so uppish about what sort of hotel we would have, next time
we went to Datchet.

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.

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.

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.

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 TIMES about it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.

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.

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.

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.

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 LONDON JOURNAL 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I steered.

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.

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.

I was steering.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

But it did not do any good.

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.

And at Marlow we left the boat by the bridge, and went and put up for the
night at the "Crown."