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"DUE SOUTH!"
[Illustration]
NOTE.--When I am travelling due South, as I am now, _per_ L. & S.
W. R., to join my party, all I require may be summed up in the
accompanying "_Mem._," which is to this effect:--
_Mem._--Give me a Pullman car, my favourite beverage, a good cigar,
or an old pipe charged with well-conditioned bird's-eye, an amiable
companion possessed of sufficient ready money in small change, give
me likewise a pack of playing cards, let the gods grant me more than
average luck at ecarte or spoof, and never can I regret the two hours
and forty minutes occupied by the journey from "W't'r'o" to "P'm'th."
To start with, the line to Pinemouth is one of those "lines" that
have "fallen," in the pleasantest of "pleasant places." On a
broiling summer's day you pass through a wide expanse of landscape,
refreshingly painted in Nature's brightest water colours--plenty of
colour, plenty of water. All over the sandy plains of Aldershot, boxes
of toy soldiers, with white toy tents and the smartest little flags,
have been emptied out; and everywhere about the tiny figures may
be seen marching, lounging, digging, riding, firing, surveying,
performing evolutions to the sound of the warlike trumpet, and
generally employed in a sort of undressed rehearsal of such martial
business as is incidental to a Great Campaign Drama. Then, lest the
spirits of the travelling tourist should rise so high that he might
run the chance of "getting a bit above hisself," as horse-dealers
graphically express it, he is whirled away from the war-like scene,
and is taken through the peaceful grounds of Wokingham. Here to the
unwonted military ardour so recently aroused in the bosom of the
travelling civilian will be administered a succession of dampers in
the shape of attractively-placed and most legibly printed reminders to
the effect that "eligible plots" for burial are "still to be let," and
that the terms for intending residents in the thriving country town of
Necropolis can be obtained on application to Messrs. Somebody and Sons
at Suchandsucher Place, London; the tone of these notices suggesting,
in a generally festive spirit, that the good old maxim "first come
first served" will be strictly observed in all matters of Necropolitan
business.
Then we come to fair Southampton Water, with its marine kind of flymen
waiting to take you to the boats, and the boats waiting to take you
from the flymen to the yachts. On we speed through the New Forest,
where those historically inclined remember WILLIAM RUFUS, and others,
with a modern political bias, think of WILLIAM HARCOURT; while the
grateful novel-devourer remembers that away in the forest resides
the authoress of _Lady Audley's Secret_, and many other plots. Here,
within ten minutes of our appointed time, is Terminus Number One, East
Pinemouth, and, finally, West Pinemouth, which, speaking for myself
individually and collectively, I prefer to East Pinemouth; at all
events, at this particular time of year. Moreover, it appears that
a rapidly increasing number are of my opinion, seeing how
house-building, and very good house-building, too, is extending
westward, and, alas and alack-a-day, threatening immediate destruction
to heather, pine, fir, and forest generally. I sing:--
"How happy could I be with heather
If builder were only away!"
No sooner is a house (most of them excellently-planned houses) set up,
with garden and lovely view of sea, than down in front of him squats
another squatter, up goes another house, the situation is robbed of
the charm of privacy, and unless the owner of the first house sits
on his own roof or has a special tower built, which erection would
probably involve him in difficulties with his neighbours, his view of
the sea is reduced to a mere peep, and in course of time will, it is
probable, be altogether blocked out. However, as Boys will be Boys, so
Builders will be Builders.
One of the chief advantages offered by Pinemouth as a place where
a summer holiday may be happily spent, is the facility afforded for
getting away from it, in every possible direction; by sea, river,
rail, and road. _A propos_ of "road," the fly-drivers, shopkeepers,
and livery-stable keepers of P'm'th, are, for the most part, like
the fly-drivers, livery-stablers, and shopkeepers at any place which
boasts a recognised season. The eccentric visitor, who chooses to come
out of the regulation time, must take his chance, and be content with
out-of-season manners to suit his out-of-season custom; still, in
the words of the immortal bard, "They're all right when you know 'em,
_but_ you've got to know 'em fust!"
As to the hiring of flys and midgets, there is a board of rules
and regulations stuck up in the railway station and elsewhere, the
interpretation whereof may possibly be mastered by those able and
willing to devote a few days to the study of its dark sayings.
"What's the meaning of this rule?" I inadvertently ask a ruddy-faced
policeman, on whose broad shoulders time unoccupied seems to be
weighing somewhat heavily, at the same time pointing to one of the
regulations on the board in question.
"Well, Sir," replies the civil constable, in a carefully measured
tone, "it is this way"--and then he commences.
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I breathe again; it is half an hour since I addressed that ruddy-faced
official, from whom, thank goodness, I have at last contrived to
escape. He has kept me there, giving me, as it were, a lecture on the
black board, telling me what this rule might mean if it were read one
way, and what that rule might mean if it were read another way, and
what both rules might mean if they were each of them read in totally
different ways; and how one was labelled "_a_" (which I saw for
myself), and how another was distinguished by being lettered "_b_";
and how he (my constabulary instructor) "wasn't quite sure himself
whether his reading of 'em was quite right;" then going over all the
paragraphs again in detail, indicating each syllable with his finger,
as though he were teaching an infant spelling-class, and finally
coming to the conclusion whereat _Bottom_ the Weaver arrived when
he surmised that it was all "past the wit of man to understand," and
advising me that, on the whole, if any particular case of attempted
extortion should happen to arise, I should do well _not_ to appeal to
these rules and regulations, but to summon the extortionist before
the nearest police magistrate. "But," said he, as if struck by a new
light, "it may be that this rule '_a_'"----And here he faced round,
in order more closely to inspect the mysterious cryptogram. Taking
advantage of his eye being off me for one second, which it had never
once been during the previous thirty minutes, I stepped as lightly and
rapidly away as my thirteen stone will permit, and fled. I fancied I
heard him calling after me that he had discovered something or other;
but not even if he had shouted "Stop thief!" should I have paused in
my Mazeppa-like career. "Once aboard the lugger," I exclaim to myself,
quoting the melodramatic pirate, "and I am free!" So saying, I entered
the hospitable gates of my present tenancy, and sank exhausted on the
sofa.
_Mem._--Never again ask a policeman to explain strange cab-rules and
regulations.
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