Chapter XV

We woke late the next morning, and then we cleaned up, and put everything straight.

We agreed that we would pull this morning, as a change from towing. It always seems to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

You cannot give me too much work. And I am careful of my work, too. Some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do.

In a boat, I have always noticed that each member of the crew thinks that he is doing everything. Harris is sure that he alone had been working. George, on the other hand, ridiculed the idea of Harris’s having done anything more than eat and sleep, and it was he – George himself – who had done all the labour.

He said he had never been out with such a couple of lazily skulks as Harris and I.

That amused Harris.

“George is talking about work!” he laughed. “Half-an-hour of it would kill him. Have you ever seen George work?” he added, turning to me.

I agreed with Harris that I never had.

“Well, have you ever seen Harris fully awake, except at meal-time?” asked George, addressing me.

I supported George.

“Well, I’ve done more than old J., anyhow,” rejoined Harris.

“Well, you couldn’t very well have done less,” added George.

“I suppose J. thinks he is the passenger,” continued Harris.

And that was their gratitude to me! It is the way of the world.

At last we decided that Harris and George should scull up past Reading, and that I should tow the boat on from there. Pulling a heavy boat against a strong stream is a little pleasure for me. There was a time, long ago, when I used to clamour for the hard work: now I like to give the young men a chance.

Chapter XVI

We came to Reading about eleven. The river is dirty and dismal here. The town itself is a famous old place. At Reading lock we met a steam launch, belonging to some friends of mine, and they towed us up to within about a mile of Streatley. It is very delightful being towed up by a launch. I prefer it myself to rowing.

The river becomes very lovely from a little above Reading. My friends’ launch left us below the grotto, and then Harris wanted to show that it was my turn to pull. This seemed to me most unreasonable. It had been arranged in the morning that I should bring the boat up to three miles above Reading. Well, here we were, ten miles above Reading! Surely it was now their turn again.

But I took the sculls. Soon George noticed something black floating on the water, and we drew up to it.

It was the dead body of a woman. It lay very lightly on the water, and the face was sweet and calm. It was not a beautiful face; but it was a gentle, lovable face.

Fortunately for us some men on the bank had seen the body too. We found out the woman’s story afterwards. Of course it was the old, old vulgar tragedy. She had loved and been deceived – or had deceived herself. Anyhow, she had sinned and her family and friends had closed their doors against her.

She began to sink lower and lower. For a while she had kept both herself and the child on the twelve shillings a week. This money does not keep body and soul together very unitedly.

She had made one last appeal to friends; and then she had gone to see her child – had held it in her arms and kissed it, and had left it, after putting into its hand a penny box of chocolate she had bought it, and afterwards, with her last few shillings, had taken a ticket and come down to Goring.

She had wandered about the woods by the river’s brink all day, and then, when evening fell, she came into the river. And the old river had taken her into its gentle arms.

Goring on the left bank and Streatley on the right are both charming places to stay at for a few days.

It is an ancient place, Streatley. Goring is not so pretty as Streatley, if you have your choice; but it is nearer the railway in case you want to slip off without paying your hotel bill.

Chapter XVII

We stayed two days at Streatley, and got our clothes washed. We had tried washing them ourselves, in the river, under George’s superintendence. Before we had washed them, they had been very, very dirty, it is true; but they became just wearable. After we had washed them – well, the river was much cleaner, after we had washed our clothes in it, than it was before. During that wash we collected all the dirt contained in the river.

The washerwoman at Streatley said she had to charge us just three times the usual prices for that wash. We paid the bill without a murmur.

The neighbourhood of Streatley and Goring is a great fishing centre. You can sit and fish all day.

Some people do. They never catch any fish, except minnows and dead cats, but that has nothing to do, of course, with fishing!

I am not a good fisherman myself. They said that as a poet, or a reporter, or anything of that kind, I might be satisfactory, but fishing, for sure, is not my business.

George and I–I don’t know what had become of Harris; he had gone out and had a shave, early in the afternoon, and had then come back, we had not seen him since – George and I, therefore, and the dog, left to ourselves, went for a walk, and, coming home, we entered a little inn.

We went into the parlour and sat down. There was an old fellow there, smoking a long clay pipe, and we naturally began to talk.

He told us that it had been a fine day today, and we told him that it had been a fine day yesterday, and then we all told each other that we thought it would be a fine day tomorrow.

After that there was a pause in the conversation, during which our eyes wandered round the room. They finally rested upon a dusty old glass-case, containing a trout. It rather fascinated me, that trout; it was such a monstrous fish. In fact, at first glance, I thought it was a cod.

“Ah!” said the old gentleman, “fine fellow that, isn’t he?”

“Quite uncommon,” I murmured; and George asked the old man how much he thought it weighed.

“Eighteen pounds six ounces,” said our friend. “Yes,” he continued, “it was sixteen years ago. I caught him just below the bridge. Good-night, gentlemen, good-night.”

And he left us alone.

We could not take our eyes off the fish after that. It really was a remarkably fine fish. We were still looking at it, when the local carrier came to the door of the room with a pot of beer in his hand, and he also looked at the fish.

“Good-sized trout, that,” said George, turning round to him.

“Ah!” replied the man; and he added, “Maybe you weren’t here, sir, when that fish was caught?”

“No,” we told him. We were strangers in the neighbourhood.

“Ah!” said the carrier, “then, of course, how should you? It was nearly five years ago that I caught that trout.”

“Oh! was it you who caught it, then?” said I. “Yes, sir,” replied the old fellow. “I caught him just below the lock; and the remarkable thing about it is that I caught him with a fly. Well, you see, he weighed twenty-six pound. Good-night, gentlemen, good-night.”

Five minutes afterwards, a third man came in, and described how he had caught it early one morning, with bleak; and then he left, and a stolid, middle-aged man came in, and sat down over by the window.

None of us spoke for a while; then George turned to him, and said:

“I beg your pardon, but my friend and myself would be so much obliged if you would tell us how you caught that trout up there.”

“Why, who told you I caught that trout?” was the surprised query.

We said that nobody had told us so, but we felt instinctively that it was he who had done it.

“Well, it’s a most remarkable thing – most remarkable,” answered the stolid stranger, laughing, “because you are quite right. I did catch it.”

And then he told us how it had broken his rod. He said he had weighed it carefully when he reached home, and it had turned the scale at thirty-four pounds.

When he was gone, the landlord came in. We told him the various histories we had heard about his trout, and he was immensely amused, and we all laughed very heartily.

“Jim Bates and Joe Muggles and Mr. Jones and old Billy Maunders all telling you that they had caught it. Ha! ha! ha! Well, that is good,” said the honest old fellow, laughing heartily. “If they had caught it, they would never have given it to me! Ha! ha! ha!”

And then he told us the real history of the fish. Of course, he had caught it himself, years ago, when he was quite a boy. He said that bringing home that trout had saved him from a whacking, and that even his school-master had admired him.

George and I again turned our heads. It really was a most astonishing trout. The more we looked at it, the more we marvelled at it.

It excited George so much that he climbed up on the back of a chair to get a better view of it.

And then the chair slipped, and George fell down, and the trout-case came down with a crash.

“You haven’t injured the fish, have you?” I cried.

“I hope not,” said George, rising cautiously and looking about.

But he had. That trout lay shattered into a thousand fragments – maybe nine hundred. I did not count them.

We thought it strange that a trout could break into little pieces. That trout was made of plaster-of-Paris.