FullReads

*****

Many years of tramping and boating up and down the Thames from Reading to Maidenhead have taught me the ins and outs of the river. I know it as I do my own pocket (and there is more in that statement than you think–especially during regatta week).

First comes Sonning with its rose gardens and quaint brick bridge; and then Marlowe with that long stretch of silver bordered by nodding trees and dominated by the robber Inn–four shillings and six for a sawdust sandwich! Then Maidenhead, swarming with boats and city folks after dark (it is only a step from the landing to any number of curtained sitting-rooms with shaded candles–and there be gay times at Maidenhead, let me tell you!). And, between, best of all, lovely Cookham.

Here the river, crazy with delight, seems to lose its head and goes meandering about, poking its nose up backwaters, creeping across meadows, flooding limpid shallows, mirroring oaks and willows upside down, surging up as if to sweep away a velvet-shorn lawn, only to pour itself–its united self–into an open-mouthed lock, and so on to a saner life in a level stretch beyond. If you want a map giving these vagaries, spill a cup of tea and follow its big and little puddles with their connecting rivulets: ten chances to one it will come out right.

All this William and I took in for three unbroken weeks, my usual summer allotment on the Thames. Never was there such a breesy, wholesome companion; stories of his life in the Veldt; of his hospital experience over that same ear–“The only crack I got, sor, thank God!–except bein’ ‘alf starved for a week and down two months with the fever–” neither of which seemed to have caused him a moment’s inconvenience; stories of the people living about him and those who came from London with a “‘am sandwidge in a noospaper, and precious little more,” rolled out of him by the hour.

And the poise of the man! When he lay stretched out beside me on the grass while I worked–an old bivouac attitude–he kept still; no twitching of legs or stretching of arms–lay as a big hound does, whose blood and breeding necessitate repose.

And we were never separated. First a plunge overboard, and then a pull back for breakfast, and off again with the luncheon tucked under the seat–and so on until the sun dropped behind the hills.

The only days on which this routine of work and play had to be changed were Sundays and holidays. Then my white umbrella would loom up as large as a circus tent, the usual crowd surging about its doors. As you cannot see London for the people, so you cannot see the river for boats on these days–all sorts of boats–wherries, tubs, launches, racing crafts, shells, punts–everything that can be poled, pulled, or wobbled, and in each one the invariable combination–a man, a girl, and a dog–a dog, a girl, and a man. This has been going on for ages, and will to the end of time.

On these mornings William and I have our bath early–ahead of the crowd really, who generally arrive two hours after sunrise and keep up the pace until the last train leaves for Paddington. This bath is at the end of one of the teacup spillways, and is called the Weir. There is a plateau, a plunge down some twenty feet into a deep pool, and the usual surroundings of fresh morning air, gay tree-tops, and the splash of cool water sparkling in the sunlight.

To-day as my boat grated on the gravel my eyes fell on a young English lord who was holding the centre of the stage in the sunlight. He was dressed from head to foot in a skin-tight suit of underwear which had been cut for him by a Garden-of-Eden tailor. He was just out of the water–a straight, well-built, ruddy-skinned fellow–every inch a man! What birth and station had done for him would become apparent when his valet began to hand him his Bond Street outfit. The next instant William stood beside him. Then there came a wriggle about the shoulders, the slip of a buckle, and he was overboard and out again before my lord had discarded his third towel.