BEFORE nine next morning the two canoes were installed on a light country
cart at Étreux: 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-Benoîte, when we arrived.