ABOUT three in the afternoon the whole establishment of the _Grand Cerf_
accompanied us to the water’s edge. The man of the omnibus was there
with haggard eyes. Poor cage-bird! Do I not remember the time when I
myself haunted the station, to watch train after train carry its
complement of freemen into the night, and read the names of distant
places on the time-bills with indescribable longings?
We were not clear of the fortifications before the rain began. The wind
was contrary, and blew in furious gusts; nor were the aspects of nature
any more clement than the doings of the sky. For we passed through a
stretch of blighted country, sparsely covered with brush, but handsomely
enough diversified with factory chimneys. We landed in a soiled meadow
among some pollards, and there smoked a pipe in a flaw of fair weather.
But the wind blew so hard, we could get little else to smoke. There were
no natural objects in the neighbourhood, but some sordid workshops. A
group of children headed by a tall girl stood and watched us from a
little distance all the time we stayed. I heartily wonder what they
thought of us.
At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; the landing-place being
steep and high, and the launch at a long distance. Near a dozen grimy
workmen lent us a hand. They refused any reward; and, what is much
better, refused it handsomely, without conveying any sense of insult.
‘It is a way we have in our countryside,’ said they. And a very becoming
way it is. In Scotland, where also you will get services for nothing,
the good people reject your money as if you had been trying to corrupt a
voter. When people take the trouble to do dignified acts, it is worth
while to take a little more, and allow the dignity to be common to all
concerned. But in our brave Saxon countries, where we plod threescore
years and ten in the mud, and the wind keeps singing in our ears from
birth to burial, we do our good and bad with a high hand and almost
offensively; and make even our alms a witness-bearing and an act of war
against the wrong.
After Hautmont, the sun came forth again and the wind went down; and a
little paddling took us beyond the ironworks and through a delectable
land. The river wound among low hills, so that sometimes the sun was at
our backs, and sometimes it stood right ahead, and the river before us
was one sheet of intolerable glory. On either hand, meadows and orchards
bordered, with a margin of sedge and water flowers, upon the river. The
hedges were of great height, woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms; and
the fields, as they were often very small, looked like a series of bowers
along the stream. There was never any prospect; sometimes a hill-top
with its trees would look over the nearest hedgerow, just to make a
middle distance for the sky; but that was all. The heaven was bare of
clouds. The atmosphere, after the rain, was of enchanting purity. The
river doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror glass; and
the dip of the paddles set the flowers shaking along the brink.
In the meadows wandered black and white cattle fantastically marked. One
beast, with a white head and the rest of the body glossy black, came to
the edge to drink, and stood gravely twitching his ears at me as I went
by, like some sort of preposterous clergyman in a play. A moment after I
heard a loud plunge, and, turning my head, saw the clergyman struggling
to shore. The bank had given way under his feet.
Besides the cattle, we saw no living things except a few birds and a
great many fishermen. These sat along the edges of the meadows,
sometimes with one rod, sometimes with as many as half a score. They
seemed stupefied with contentment; and when we induced them to exchange a
few words with us about the weather, their voices sounded quiet and far
away. There was a strange diversity of opinion among them as to the kind
of fish for which they set their lures; although they were all agreed in
this, that the river was abundantly supplied. Where it was plain that no
two of them had ever caught the same kind of fish, we could not help
suspecting that perhaps not any one of them had ever caught a fish at
all. I hope, since the afternoon was so lovely, that they were one and
all rewarded; and that a silver booty went home in every basket for the
pot. Some of my friends would cry shame on me for this; but I prefer a
man, were he only an angler, to the bravest pair of gills in all God’s
waters. I do not affect fishes unless when cooked in sauce; whereas an
angler is an important piece of river scenery, and hence deserves some
recognition among canoeists. He can always tell you where you are after
a mild fashion; and his quiet presence serves to accentuate the solitude
and stillness, and remind you of the glittering citizens below your boat.
The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro among his little hills,
that it was past six before we drew near the lock at Quartes. There were
some children on the tow-path, with whom the _Cigarette_ fell into a
chaffing talk as they ran along beside us. It was in vain that I warned
him. In vain I told him, in English, that boys were the most dangerous
creatures; and if once you began with them, it was safe to end in a
shower of stones. For my own part, whenever anything was addressed to
me, I smiled gently and shook my head as though I were an inoffensive
person inadequately acquainted with French. For indeed I have had such
experience at home, that I would sooner meet many wild animals than a
troop of healthy urchins.
But I was doing injustice to these peaceable young Hainaulters. When the
_Cigarette_ went off to make inquiries, I got out upon the bank to smoke
a pipe and superintend the boats, and became at once the centre of much
amiable curiosity. The children had been joined by this time by a young
woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm; and this gave me more security.
When I let slip my first word or so in French, a little girl nodded her
head with a comical grown-up air. ‘Ah, you see,’ she said, ‘he
understands well enough now; he was just making believe.’ And the little
group laughed together very good-naturedly.
They were much impressed when they heard we came from England; and the
little girl proffered the information that England was an island ‘and a
far way from here—_bien loin d’ici_.’
‘Ay, you may say that, a far way from here,’ said the lad with one arm.
I was as nearly home-sick as ever I was in my life; they seemed to make
it such an incalculable distance to the place where I first saw the day.
They admired the canoes very much. And I observed one piece of delicacy
in these children, which is worthy of record. They had been deafening us
for the last hundred yards with petitions for a sail; ay, and they
deafened us to the same tune next morning when we came to start; but
then, when the canoes were lying empty, there was no word of any such
petition. Delicacy? or perhaps a bit of fear for the water in so crank a
vessel? I hate cynicism a great deal worse than I do the devil; unless
perhaps the two were the same thing? And yet ’tis a good tonic; the cold
tub and bath-towel of the sentiments; and positively necessary to life in
cases of advanced sensibility.
From the boats they turned to my costume. They could not make enough of
my red sash; and my knife filled them with awe.
‘They make them like that in England,’ said the boy with one arm. I was
glad he did not know how badly we make them in England now-a-days. ‘They
are for people who go away to sea,’ he added, ‘and to defend one’s life
against great fish.’
I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure to the little group
at every word. And so I suppose I was. Even my pipe, although it was an
ordinary French clay pretty well ‘trousered,’ as they call it, would have
a rarity in their eyes, as a thing coming from so far away. And if my
feathers were not very fine in themselves, they were all from over seas.
One thing in my outfit, however, tickled them out of all politeness; and
that was the bemired condition of my canvas shoes. I suppose they were
sure the mud at any rate was a home product. The little girl (who was
the genius of the party) displayed her own sabots in competition; and I
wish you could have seen how gracefully and merrily she did it.
The young woman’s milk-can, a great amphora of hammered brass, stood some
way off upon the sward. I was glad of an opportunity to divert public
attention from myself, and return some of the compliments I had received.
So I admired it cordially both for form and colour, telling them, and
very truly, that it was as beautiful as gold. They were not surprised.
The things were plainly the boast of the countryside. And the children
expatiated on the costliness of these amphoræ, which sell sometimes as
high as thirty francs apiece; told me how they were carried on donkeys,
one on either side of the saddle, a brave caparison in themselves; and
how they were to be seen all over the district, and at the larger farms
in great number and of great size.