THE OISE IN FLOOD



Before nine next morning the two canoes were installed on a light
country cart at Etreux: and we were soon following them along the
side of a pleasant valley full of hop-gardens and poplars.
Agreeable villages lay here and there on the slope of the hill;
notably, Tupigny, with the hop-poles hanging their garlands in the
very street, and the houses clustered with grapes. There was a
faint enthusiasm on our passage; weavers put their heads to the
windows; children cried out in ecstasy at sight of the two
'boaties'--barguettes: and bloused pedestrians, who were
acquainted with our charioteer, jested with him on the nature of
his freight.

We had a shower or two, but light and flying. The air was clean
and sweet among all these green fields and green things growing.
There was not a touch of autumn in the weather. And when, at
Vadencourt, we launched from a little lawn opposite a mill, the sun
broke forth and set all the leaves shining in the valley of the
Oise.

The river was swollen with the long rains. From Vadencourt all the
way to Origny, it ran with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh
heart at each mile, and racing as though it already smelt the sea.
The water was yellow and turbulent, swung with an angry eddy among
half-submerged willows, and made an angry clatter along stony
shores. The course kept turning and turning in a narrow and well-
timbered valley. Now the river would approach the side, and run
griding along the chalky base of the hill, and show us a few open
colza-fields among the trees. Now it would skirt the garden-walls
of houses, where we might catch a glimpse through a doorway, and
see a priest pacing in the chequered sunlight. Again, the foliage
closed so thickly in front, that there seemed to be no issue; only
a thicket of willows, overtopped by elms and poplars, under which
the river ran flush and fleet, and where a kingfisher flew past
like a piece of the blue sky. On these different manifestations
the sun poured its clear and catholic looks. The shadows lay as
solid on the swift surface of the stream as on the stable meadows.
The light sparkled golden in the dancing poplar leaves, and brought
the hills into communion with our eyes. And all the while the
river never stopped running or took breath; and the reeds along the
whole valley stood shivering from top to toe.

There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it not) founded
on the shivering of the reeds. There are not many things in nature
more striking to man's eye. It is such an eloquent pantomime of
terror; and to see such a number of terrified creatures taking
sanctuary in every nook along the shore, is enough to infect a
silly human with alarm. Perhaps they are only a-cold, and no
wonder, standing waist-deep in the stream. Or perhaps they have
never got accustomed to the speed and fury of the river's flux, or
the miracle of its continuous body. Pan once played upon their
forefathers; and so, by the hands of his river, he still plays upon
these later generations down all the valley of the Oise; and plays
the same air, both sweet and shrill, to tell us of the beauty and
the terror of the world.

The canoe was like a leaf in the current. It took it up and shook
it, and carried it masterfully away, like a Centaur carrying off a
nymph. To keep some command on our direction required hard and
diligent plying of the paddle. The river was in such a hurry for
the sea! Every drop of water ran in a panic, like as many people
in a frightened crowd. But what crowd was ever so numerous, or so
single-minded? All the objects of sight went by at a dance
measure; the eyesight raced with the racing river; the exigencies
of every moment kept the pegs screwed so tight, that our being
quivered like a well-tuned instrument; and the blood shook off its
lethargy, and trotted through all the highways and byways of the
veins and arteries, and in and out of the heart, as if circulation
were but a holiday journey, and not the daily moil of threescore
years and ten. The reeds might nod their heads in warning, and
with tremulous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was
strong and cold, and how death lurked in the eddy underneath the
willows. But the reeds had to stand where they were; and those who
stand still are always timid advisers. As for us, we could have
shouted aloud. If this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a
thing of death's contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously
outwitted himself with us. I was living three to the minute. I
was scoring points against him every stroke of my paddle, every
turn of the stream. I have rarely had better profit of my life.

For I think we may look upon our little private war with death
somewhat in this light. If a man knows he will sooner or later be
robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every
inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much gained upon the
thieves. And above all, where instead of simply spending, he makes
a profitable investment for some of his money, when it will be out
of risk of loss. So every bit of brisk living, and above all when
it is healthful, is just so much gained upon the wholesale filcher,
death. We shall have the less in our pockets, the more in our
stomach, when he cries stand and deliver. A swift stream is a
favourite artifice of his, and one that brings him in a comfortable
thing per annum; but when he and I come to settle our accounts, I
shall whistle in his face for these hours upon the upper Oise.

Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sunshine and the
exhilaration of the pace. We could no longer contain ourselves and
our content. The canoes were too small for us; we must be out and
stretch ourselves on shore. And so in a green meadow we bestowed
our limbs on the grass, and smoked deifying tobacco and proclaimed
the world excellent. It was the last good hour of the day, and I
dwell upon it with extreme complacency.

On one side of the valley, high up on the chalky summit of the
hill, a ploughman with his team appeared and disappeared at regular
intervals. At each revelation he stood still for a few seconds
against the sky: for all the world (as the Cigarette declared)
like a toy Burns who should have just ploughed up the Mountain
Daisy. He was the only living thing within view, unless we are to
count the river.

On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a belfry
showed among the foliage. Thence some inspired bell-ringer made
the afternoon musical on a chime of bells. There was something
very sweet and taking in the air he played; and we thought we had
never heard bells speak so intelligibly, or sing so melodiously, as
these. It must have been to some such measure that the spinners
and the young maids sang, 'Come away, Death,' in the Shakespearian
Illyria. There is so often a threatening note, something blatant
and metallic, in the voice of bells, that I believe we have fully
more pain than pleasure from hearing them; but these, as they
sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with a plaintive cadence
that caught the ear like the burthen of a popular song, were always
moderate and tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of
still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or the babble
of a rookery in spring. I could have asked the bell-ringer for his
blessing, good, sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently to the
time of his meditations. I could have blessed the priest or the
heritors, or whoever may be concerned with such affairs in France,
who had left these sweet old bells to gladden the afternoon, and
not held meetings, and made collections, and had their names
repeatedly printed in the local paper, to rig up a peal of brand-
new, brazen, Birmingham-hearted substitutes, who should bombard
their sides to the provocation of a brand-new bell-ringer, and fill
the echoes of the valley with terror and riot.

At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun withdrew.
The piece was at an end; shadow and silence possessed the valley of
the Oise. We took to the paddle with glad hearts, like people who
have sat out a noble performance and returned to work. The river
was more dangerous here; it ran swifter, the eddies were more
sudden and violent. All the way down we had had our fill of
difficulties. Sometimes it was a weir which could be shot,
sometimes one so shallow and full of stakes that we must withdraw
the boats from the water and carry them round. But the chief sort
of obstacle was a consequence of the late high winds. Every two or
three hundred yards a tree had fallen across the river, and usually
involved more than another in its fall.

Often there was free water at the end, and we could steer round the
leafy promontory and hear the water sucking and bubbling among the
twigs. Often, again, when the tree reached from bank to bank,
there was room, by lying close, to shoot through underneath, canoe
and all. Sometimes it was necessary to get out upon the trunk
itself and pull the boats across; and sometimes, when the stream
was too impetuous for this, there was nothing for it but to land
and 'carry over.' This made a fine series of accidents in the
day's career, and kept us aware of ourselves.

Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was leading by a long
way, and still full of a noble, exulting spirit in honour of the
sun, the swift pace, and the church bells, the river made one of
its leonine pounces round a corner, and I was aware of another
fallen tree within a stone-cast. I had my backboard down in a
trice, and aimed for a place where the trunk seemed high enough
above the water, and the branches not too thick to let me slip
below. When a man has just vowed eternal brotherhood with the
universe, he is not in a temper to take great determinations
coolly, and this, which might have been a very important
determination for me, had not been taken under a happy star. The
tree caught me about the chest, and while I was yet struggling to
make less of myself and get through, the river took the matter out
of my hands, and bereaved me of my boat. The Arethusa swung round
broadside on, leaned over, ejected so much of me as still remained
on board, and thus disencumbered, whipped under the tree, righted,
and went merrily away down stream.

I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the tree to
which I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared about.
My thoughts were of a grave and almost sombre character, but I
still clung to my paddle. The stream ran away with my heels as
fast as I could pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight,
to have all the water of the Oise in my trousers-pockets. You can
never know, till you try it, what a dead pull a river makes against
a man. Death himself had me by the heels, for this was his last
ambuscado, and he must now join personally in the fray. And still
I held to my paddle. At last I dragged myself on to my stomach on
the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of
humour and injustice. A poor figure I must have presented to Burns
upon the hill-top with his team. But there was the paddle in my
hand. On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words
inscribed: 'He clung to his paddle.'

The Cigarette had gone past a while before; for, as I might have
observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at
the moment, there was a clear way round the tree-top at the farther
side. He had offered his services to haul me out, but as I was
then already on my elbows, I had declined, and sent him down stream
after the truant Arethusa. The stream was too rapid for a man to
mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands. So I crawled
along the trunk to shore, and proceeded down the meadows by the
river-side. I was so cold that my heart was sore. I had now an
idea of my own why the reeds so bitterly shivered. I could have
given any of them a lesson. The Cigarette remarked facetiously
that he thought I was 'taking exercise' as I drew near, until he
made out for certain that I was only twittering with cold. I had a
rub down with a towel, and donned a dry suit from the india-rubber
bag. But I was not my own man again for the rest of the voyage. I
had a queasy sense that I wore my last dry clothes upon my body.
The struggle had tired me; and perhaps, whether I knew it or not, I
was a little dashed in spirit. The devouring element in the
universe had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened
by a running stream. The bells were all very pretty in their way,
but I had heard some of the hollow notes of Pan's music. Would the
wicked river drag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so
beautiful all the time? Nature's good-humour was only skin-deep
after all.

There was still a long way to go by the winding course of the
stream, and darkness had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in
Origny Sainte-Benoite, when we arrived.