CHAPTER XVI.
Reading.--We are towed by steam launch.--Irritating behaviour of smallboats.--How they get in the way of steam launches.--George and Harrisagain shirk their work.--Rather a hackneyed story.--Streatley and Goring.
We came in sight of Reading about eleven. The river is dirty and dismalhere. One does not linger in the neighbourhood of Reading. The townitself is a famous old place, dating from the dim days of King Ethelred,when the Danes anchored their warships in the Kennet, and started fromReading to ravage all the land of Wessex; and here Ethelred and hisbrother Alfred fought and defeated them, Ethelred doing the praying andAlfred the fighting.
In later years, Reading seems to have been regarded as a handy place torun down to, when matters were becoming unpleasant in London. Parliamentgenerally rushed off to Reading whenever there was a plague on atWestminster; and, in 1625, the Law followed suit, and all the courts wereheld at Reading. It must have been worth while having a mere ordinaryplague now and then in London to get rid of both the lawyers and theParliament.
During the Parliamentary struggle, Reading was besieged by the Earl ofEssex, and, a quarter of a century later, the Prince of Orange routedKing James's troops there.
Henry I. lies buried at Reading, in the Benedictine abbey founded by himthere, the ruins of which may still be seen; and, in this same abbey,great John of Gaunt was married to the Lady Blanche.
At Reading lock we came up with a steam launch, belonging to some friendsof mine, and they towed us up to within about a mile of Streatley. It isvery delightful being towed up by a launch. I prefer it myself torowing. The run would have been more delightful still, if it had notbeen for a lot of wretched small boats that were continually getting inthe way of our launch, and, to avoid running down which, we had to becontinually easing and stopping. It is really most annoying, the mannerin which these rowing boats get in the way of one's launch up the river;something ought to done to stop it.
And they are so confoundedly impertinent, too, over it. You can whistletill you nearly burst your boiler before they will trouble themselves tohurry. I would have one or two of them run down now and then, if I hadmy way, just to teach them all a lesson.
The river becomes very lovely from a little above Reading. The railwayrather spoils it near Tilehurst, but from Mapledurham up to Streatley itis glorious. A little above Mapledurham lock you pass Hardwick House,where Charles I. played bowls. The neighbourhood of Pangbourne, wherethe quaint little Swan Inn stands, must be as familiar to the _habitues_of the Art Exhibitions as it is to its own inhabitants.
My friends' launch cast us loose just below the grotto, and then Harriswanted to make out that it was my turn to pull. This seemed to me mostunreasonable. It had been arranged in the morning that I should bringthe boat up to three miles above Reading. Well, here we were, ten milesabove Reading! Surely it was now their turn again.
I could not get either George or Harris to see the matter in its properlight, however; so, to save argument, I took the sculls. I had not beenpulling for more than a minute or so, when George noticed something blackfloating on the water, and we drew up to it. George leant over, as weneared it, and laid hold of it. And then he drew back with a cry, and ablanched face.
It was the dead body of a woman. It lay very lightly on the water, andthe face was sweet and calm. It was not a beautiful face; it was tooprematurely aged-looking, too thin and drawn, to be that; but it was agentle, lovable face, in spite of its stamp of pinch and poverty, andupon it was that look of restful peace that comes to the faces of thesick sometimes when at last the pain has left them.
Fortunately for us--we having no desire to be kept hanging aboutcoroners' courts--some men on the bank had seen the body too, and nowtook charge of it from us.
We found out the woman's story afterwards. Of course it was the old, oldvulgar tragedy. She had loved and been deceived--or had deceivedherself. Anyhow, she had sinned--some of us do now and then--and herfamily and friends, naturally shocked and indignant, had closed theirdoors against her.
Left to fight the world alone, with the millstone of her shame around herneck, she had sunk ever lower and lower. For a while she had kept bothherself and the child on the twelve shillings a week that twelve hours'drudgery a day procured her, paying six shillings out of it for thechild, and keeping her own body and soul together on the remainder.
Six shillings a week does not keep body and soul together very unitedly.They want to get away from each other when there is only such a veryslight bond as that between them; and one day, I suppose, the pain andthe dull monotony of it all had stood before her eyes plainer than usual,and the mocking spectre had frightened her. She had made one last appealto friends, but, against the chill wall of their respectability, thevoice of the erring outcast fell unheeded; and then she had gone to seeher child--had held it in her arms and kissed it, in a weary, dull sortof way, and without betraying any particular emotion of any kind, and hadleft it, after putting into its hand a penny box of chocolate she hadbought it, and afterwards, with her last few shillings, had taken aticket and come down to Goring.
[Picture: Woman in the water]
It seemed that the bitterest thoughts of her life must have centred aboutthe wooded reaches and the bright green meadows around Goring; but womenstrangely hug the knife that stabs them, and, perhaps, amidst the gall,there may have mingled also sunny memories of sweetest hours, spent uponthose shadowed deeps over which the great trees bend their branches downso low.
She had wandered about the woods by the river's brink all day, and then,when evening fell and the grey twilight spread its dusky robe upon thewaters, she stretched her arms out to the silent river that had known hersorrow and her joy. And the old river had taken her into its gentlearms, and had laid her weary head upon its bosom, and had hushed away thepain.
Thus had she sinned in all things--sinned in living and in dying. Godhelp her! and all other sinners, if any more there be.
Goring on the left bank and Streatley on the right are both or eithercharming places to stay at for a few days. The reaches down toPangbourne woo one for a sunny sail or for a moonlight row, and thecountry round about is full of beauty. We had intended to push on toWallingford that day, but the sweet smiling face of the river here luredus to linger for a while; and so we left our boat at the bridge, and wentup into Streatley, and lunched at the "Bull," much to Montmorency'ssatisfaction.
They say that the hills on each ride of the stream here once joined andformed a barrier across what is now the Thames, and that then the riverended there above Goring in one vast lake. I am not in a position eitherto contradict or affirm this statement. I simply offer it.
It is an ancient place, Streatley, dating back, like most river-sidetowns and villages, to British and Saxon times. Goring is not nearly sopretty a little spot to stop at as Streatley, if you have your choice;but it is passing fair enough in its way, and is nearer the railway incase you want to slip off without paying your hotel bill.