'RISE, SIR JANE PUDDLE''RISE, SIR JANE PUDDLE'
'RISE, SIR JANE PUDDLE''RISE, SIR JANE PUDDLE'
That morning we left Porlock by a hill which compared with the one we came into it by, was like the biggest Pyramid of Egypt by the side of a haycock. I don't suppose in the whole civilized world there is a worse hill with a road on it than the one we went up by. I was glad we had to go up it instead of down it, though it was very hard to walk, pushing the tricycle, even when helped. I believe it would have taken away my breath and turned me dizzy even to take one step face forward down such a hill, and gaze into the dreadful depths below me; and yet they drive coaches and fours down that hill. At the top of the hill is this notice: "To cyclers—this hill is dangerous." If I had thought of it I should have looked for the cyclers' graves at the bottom of it.
The reason I thought about this was that I had been reading about one of the mountains in Switzerland, which is one of the highest and most dangerous, and with the poorest view, where so many Alpine climbers have been killed that there is a little graveyard nearly full of their graves at the foot of the mountain. How they could walk through that graveyard and read the inscriptions on the tombstones and then go and climb that mountain is more than I can imagine.
In walking up this hill, and thinking that it might have been in front of me when my tricycle ran away, I could not keep my mind away from the little graveyard at the foot of the Swiss mountain.
O
CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
n the third day of our cycle trip we journeyed along a lofty road, with the wild moor on one side and the tossing sea on the other, and at night reached Lynton. It is a little town on a jutting crag, and far down below it on the edge of the sea was another town named Lynmouth, and there is a car with a wire rope to it, like an elevator, which they call The Lift, which takes people up and down from one town to another.
Here we stopped at a house very different from the Ship Inn, for it looked as if it had been built the day before yesterday. Everything was new and shiny, and we had our supper at a long table with about twenty other people, just like a boardinghouse. Some of their ways reminded me of the backwoods, and I suppose there is nothing more modern than backwoodsism, which naturally hasn't the least alloy of the past. When the people got through with their cups of coffee or tea, mostly the last, two women went around the table, one with a big bowl for us to lean back and empty our slops into, and the other with the tea or coffee to fill up the cups. A gentleman with a baldish head, who was sitting opposite us, began to be sociable as soon as he heard us speak to the waiters, and asked questions about America. After he got through with about a dozen of them he said:
"Is it true, as I have heard, that what you call native-born Americans deteriorate in the third generation?"
I had been answering most of the questions, but now Jone spoke up quick. "That depends," says he, "on their original blood. When Americans are descended from Englishmen they steadily improve, generation after generation." The baldish man smiled at this, and said there was nothing like having good blood for a foundation. But Mr. Poplington laughed, and said to me that Jone had served him right.
The country about Lynton is wonderfully beautiful, with rocks and valleys, and velvet lawns running into the sea, and woods and ancestral mansions, and we spent the day seeing all this, and also going down to Lynmouth, where the little ships lie high and dry on the sand when the tide goes out, and the carts drive up to them and put goods on board, and when the tide rises the ships sail away, which is very convenient.
I wanted to keep on along the coast, but the others didn't, and the next morning we started back to Chedcombe by a roundabout way, so that we might see Exmoor and the country where Lorna Doone and John Ridd cut up their didoes. I must say I liked the story a good deal better before I saw the country where the things happened. The mind of man is capable of soarings which Nature weakens at when she sees what she is called upon to do. If you want a real, first-class, tooth-on-edge Doone valley, the place to look for it is in the book. We went rolling along on the smooth, hard roads, which are just as good here as if they was in London, and all around us was stretched out the wild and desolate moors, with the wind screaming and whistling over the heather, nearly tearing the clothes off our backs, while the rain beat down on us with a steady pelting, and the ragged sheep stopped to look at us, as if we was three witches and they was Macbeths.
The very thought that I was out in a wild storm on a desolate moor filled my soul with a sort of triumph, and I worked my tricycle as if I was spurring my steed to battle. The only thing that troubled me was the thought that if the water that poured off my mackintosh that day could have run into our cistern at home, it would have been a glorious good thing. Jone did not like the fierce blast and the inspiriting rain, but I knew he'd stand it as long as Mr. Poplington did, and so I was content, although, if we had been overtaken by a covered wagon, I should have trembled for the result.
That night we stopped in the little village of Simonsbath at Somebody's Arms. After dinner Mr. Poplington, who knew some people in the place, went out, but Jone and me went to bed as quick as we could, for we was tired. The next morning we was wakened by a tremendous pounding at the door. I didn't know what to make of it, for it was too early and too loud for hot water, but we heard Mr. Poplington calling to us, and Jone jumped up to see what he wanted.
"Get up," said he, "if you want to see a sight that you never saw before. We'll start off immediately and breakfast at Exford." The hope of seeing a sight was enough to make me bounce at any time, and I never dressed or packed a bag quicker than I did that morning, and Jone wasn't far behind me.
When we got down-stairs we found our cycles waiting ready at the door, together with the stable man and the stable boy and the boy's helper and the cook and the chambermaid and the waiters and the other servants, waiting for their tips. Mr. Poplington seemed in a fine humor, and he told us he had heard the night before that there was to be a stag hunt that day, the first of the season. In fact, it was not one of the regular meets, but what they called a by-meet, and not known to everybody.
"We will go on to Exford," said he, straddling his bicycle, "for though the meet isn't to be there, there's where they keep the hounds and horses, and if we make good speed we shall get there before they start out."
The three of us travelled abreast, Mr. Poplington in the middle, and on the way he told us a good deal about stag hunts. What I remember best, having to go so fast and having to mind my steering, was that after the hunting season began they hunted stags until a certain day—I forget what it was—and then they let them alone and began to hunt the does; and that after that particular day of the month, when the stags heard the hounds coming they paid no attention to them, knowing very well it was the does' turn to be chased, and that they would not be bothered; and so they let the female members of their families take care of themselves; which shows that ungentlemanliness extends itself even into Nature.
When we got to Exford we left our cycles at the inn and followed Mr. Poplington to the hunting stables, which are near by. I had not gone a dozen steps from the door before I heard a great barking, and the next minute there came around the corner a pack of hounds. They crossed the bridge over the little river, and then they stopped. We went up to them, and while Mr. Poplington talked to the men the whole of that pack of hounds gathered about us as gentle as lambs. They were good big dogs, white and brown. The head huntsman who had them in charge told me there was thirty couple of them, and I thought that sixty dogs was pretty heavy odds against one deer. Then they moved off as orderly as if they had been children in a kindergarten, and we went to the stables and saw the horses; and then the master of the hounds and a good many other gentlemen in red coats, in all sorts of traps, rode up, and their hunters were saddled, and the dogs barked and the men cracked their whips to keep them together, and there was a bustle and liveliness to a degree I can't write about, and Jone and I never thought about going in to breakfast until all those horses, some led and some ridden, and the men and the hounds, and even the dust from their feet, had disappeared.
I wanted to go see the hunt start off, but Mr. Poplington said it was two or three miles distant, and out of our way, and that we'd better move on as soon as possible so as to reach Chedcombe that night; but he was glad, he said, that we had had a chance to see the hounds and the horses.
As for himself, I could see he was a little down in the mouth, for he said he was very fond of hunting, and that if he had known of this meet he would have been there with a horse and his hunting clothes. I think he hoped somebody would lend him a horse, but nobody did, and not being able to hunt himself he disliked seeing other people doing what he could not. Of course, Jone and me could not go to the hunt by ourselves, so after we'd had our tea and toast and bacon we started off. I will say here that when I was at the Ship Inn I had tea for my breakfast, for I couldn't bring my mind to order coffee—a drink the Saxons must never have heard of—in such a place; and since that we have been drinking it because Jone said there was no use fighting against established drinks, and that anyway he thought good tea was better than bad coffee.
CHEDCOMBE
As I said in my last letter, we started out for Chedcombe, not abreast, as we had been before, but strung along the road, and me and Mr. Poplington pretty doleful, being disappointed and not wanting to talk. But as for Jone, he seemed livelier than ever, and whistled a lot of tunes he didn't know. I think it always makes him lively to get rid of seeing sights. The sun was shining brightly, and there was no reason to expect rain for two or three hours anyway, and the country we passed through was so fine, with hardly any houses, and with great hills and woods, and sometimes valleys far below the road, with streams rushing and bubbling, that after a while I began to feel better, and I pricked up my tricycle, and, of course, being followed by Jone, we left Mr. Poplington, whose melancholy seemed to have gotten into his legs, a good way behind.
We must have travelled two or three hours when all of a sudden I heard a noise afar, and I drew up and listened. The noise was the barking of dogs, and it seemed to come from a piece of woods on the other side of the field which lay to the right of the road. The next instant something shot out from under the trees and began going over the field in ten-foot hops. I sat staring without understanding, but when I saw a lot of brown and white spots bounce out of the wood, and saw, a long way back in the open field, two red-coated men on horseback, the truth flashed upon me that this was the hunt. The creature in front was the stag, who had chosen to come this way, and the dogs and the horses was after him, and I was here to see it all.
Almost before I got this all straight in my mind the deer was nearly opposite me on the other side of the field, going the same way that we were. In a second I clapped spurs into my tricycle and was off. In front of me was a long stretch of down grade, and over this I went as fast as I could work my pedals; no brakes or holding back for me. My blood was up, for I was actually in a deer hunt, and to my amazement and wild delight I found I was keeping up with the deer. I was going faster than the men on horseback.
"Hi! Hi!" I shouted, and down I went with one eye on the deer and the other on the road, every atom of my body tingling with fiery excitement. When I began to go up the little slope ahead I heard Jone puffing behind me.
"You will break your neck," he shouted, "if you go down hill that way," and getting close up to me he fastened his cord to my tricycle. But I paid no attention to him or his advice.
"The stag! The stag!" I cried. "As long as he keeps near the road we can follow him! Hi!" And having got up to the top of the next hill I made ready to go down as fast as I had gone before, for we had fallen back a little, and the stag was now getting ahead of us; but it made me gnash my teeth to find that I could not go fast, for Jone held back with all his force (and both feet on the ground, I expect), and I could not get on at all.
"Let go of me," I cried, "we shall lose the stag. Stop holding back." But it wasn't any use; Jone's heels must have been nearly rubbed off, but he held back like a good fellow, and I seemed to be moving along no faster than a worm. I could not stand this; my blood boiled and bubbled; the deer was getting away from me; and if it had been Porlock Hill in front of me I would have dashed on, not caring whether the road was steep or level.
A thought flashed across my mind, and I clapped my hand into my pocket and jerked out a pair of scissors. In an instant I was free. The world and the stag was before me, and I was flying along with a tornado-like swiftness that soon brought me abreast of the deer. This perfectly splendid, bounding creature was not far away from me on the other side of the hedge, and as the field was higher than the road I could see him perfectly. His legs worked so regular and springy, except when he came to a cross hedge, which he went over with a single clip, and came down like India rubber on the other side, that one might have thought he was measuring the grass, and keeping an account of his jumps in his head.
'IN AN INSTANT I WAS FREE.''IN AN INSTANT I WAS FREE.'
'IN AN INSTANT I WAS FREE.''IN AN INSTANT I WAS FREE.'
For one instant I looked around for the hounds, and I saw there was not more than half a dozen following him, and I could only see the two hunters I had seen before, and these was still a good way back. As for Jone, I couldn't hear him at all, and he must have been left far behind. There was still the woods on the other side, and the deer seemed to run to keep away from that and to cross the road, and he came nearer and nearer until I fancied he kept an eye on me as if he was wondering if I was of any consequence, and if I could hinder him from crossing the road and getting away into the valley below where there was a regular wilderness of woods and underbrush.
If he does that, I thought, he will be gone in a minute and I shall lose him, and the hunt will be over. And for fear he would make for the hedge and jump over it, not minding me, I jerked out my handkerchief and shook it at him. You can't imagine how this frightened him. He turned sharp to the right, dashed up the hill, cleared a hedge and was gone. I gave a gasp and a scream as I saw him disappear. I believe I cried, but I didn't stop, and glad I was that I didn't; for in less than a minute I had come to a cross lane which led in the very direction the deer had taken. I turned into this lane and went on as fast as I could, and I soon found that it led through a thick wood. Down in the hollow, which I could not see into, I heard a barking and shouting, and I kept on just as fast as I could make that tricycle go. Where the lane led to, or what I should ever come to, I didn't think about. I was hunting a stag, and all I cared for was to feel my tricycle bounding beneath me.
I may have gone a half a mile or two miles—I have not an idea how far it was—when suddenly I came to a place where there was green grass and rocks in an opening in the woods, and what a sight I saw! There was that beautiful, grand, red deer half down on his knees and perfectly quiet, and there was one of the men in red coats coming toward him with a great knife in his hand, and a little farther back was three or four dogs with another man, still on horseback, whipping them to keep them back, though they seemed willing enough to lie there with their tongues out, panting. As the man with the knife came up to the deer, the poor creature raised its eyes to him, and didn't seem to mind whether he came or not. It was trembling all over and fairly tired to death. When the man got near enough he took hold of one of the deer's horns and lifted up the hand with the knife in it, but he didn't bring it down on that deer's throat, I can tell you, madam, for I was there and had him by the arm.
He turned on me as if he had been struck by lightning.
"What do you mean?" he shouted. "Let go my arm."
"Don't you touch that deer," said I—my voice was so husky I could hardly speak—"don't you see it's surrendered? Can you have the heart to cut that beautiful throat when he is pleading for mercy?" The man's eyes looked as if they would burst out of his head. He gave me a pull and a push as if he would stick the knife into me, and he actually swore at me, but I didn't mind that.
'IF YOU WAS A MAN I'D BREAK YOUR HEAD''IF YOU WAS A MAN I'D BREAK YOUR HEAD'
'IF YOU WAS A MAN I'D BREAK YOUR HEAD''IF YOU WAS A MAN I'D BREAK YOUR HEAD'
"You have got that poor creature now," said I, "and that's enough. Keep it and tame it and bring it up with your children." I didn't have time to say anything more, and he didn't have time to answer, for two of the dogs who had got a little of their wind back sprang up and made a jump at the stag; and he, having got a little of his wind back, jerked his horn out of the hand of the man, and giving a sort of side spring backward among the bushes and rocks, away he went, the dogs after him.
The man with the knife rushed out into the lane, and so did I, and so did the man on horseback, almost on top of me. On the other side of the lane was a little gorge with rocks and trees and water at the bottom of it, and I was just in time to see the stag spring over the lane and drop out of sight among the rocks and the moss and the vines.
The man stood and swore at me regardless of my sex, so violent was his rage.
"If you was a man I'd break your head," he yelled.
"I'm glad I'm not," said I, "for I wouldn't want my head broken. But what troubles me is, that I'm afraid that deer has broken his legs or hurt himself some way, for I never saw anything drop on rocks in such a reckless manner, and the poor thing so tired."
The man swore again, and said something about wishing somebody else's legs had been broken; and then he shouted to the man on horseback to call off the dogs, which was of no use, for he was doing it already. Then he turned on me again.
"You are an American," he shouted. "I might have known that. No English woman would ever have done such a beastly thing as that."
"You're mistaken there," I said; "there isn't a true English woman that lives who would not have done the same thing. Your mother—"
"Confound my mother!" yelled the man.
"All right," said I; "that's all in your family and none of my business." Then he went off raging to where he had left his horse by a gatepost.
The other man, who was a good deal younger and more friendly, came up to me and said he wouldn't like to be in my boots, for I had spoiled a pretty piece of sport; and then he went on and told me that it had been a bad hunt, for instead of starting only one stag, three or four of them had been started, and they had had a bad time, for the hounds and the hunters had been mixed up in a nasty way. And at last, when the master of the hounds and most every one else had gone off over Dunkery Hill, and he didn't know whether they was after two stags or one, he and his mate, who was both whippers-in, had gone to turn part of the pack that had broken away, and had found that these dogs was after another stag, and so before they knew it they was in a hunt of their own, and they would have killed that stag if it had not been for me; and he said it was hard on his mate, for he knew he had it in mind that he was going to kill the only stag of the day.
He went on to say, that as for himself he wasn't so sorry, for this was Sir Skiddery Henchball's land, and when a stag was killed it belonged to the man whose land it died on. He told me that the master of the hunt gets the head and the antlers, and the huntsman some other part, which I forget, but the owner of the land, no matter whether he's in the hunt or not, gets the body of the stag. "There's a cottage not a mile down this lane," said he, "with its thatch torn off, and my sister and her children live there, and Sir Skiddery turned them out on account of the rent, and so I'm glad the old skinflint didn't get the venison." And then he went off, being called by the other man.
I didn't know what time it was, but it seemed as if it must be getting on into the afternoon; and feeling that my deer hunt was over, I thought I had better lose no time in hunting up Jone, so I followed on after the men and the dogs, who was going to the main road, but keeping a little back of them, though, for I didn't know what the older one might do if he happened to turn and see me.
I was sure that Jone had passed the little lane without seeing it, so I kept on the way we had been going, and got up all the speed I could, though I must say I was dreadfully tired, and even trembling a little, for while I had been stag hunting I was so excited I didn't know how much work I was doing. There was sign-posts enough to tell me the way to Chedcombe, and so I kept straight on, up hill and down hill, until at last I saw a man ahead on a bicycle, which I soon knew to be Mr. Poplington. He was surprised enough at seeing me, and told me my husband had gone ahead. I didn't explain anything, and it wasn't until we got nearly to Chedcombe that we met Jone. He had been to Chedcombe, and was coming back.
Jone is a good fellow, but he's got a will of his own, and he said that this would be the end of my tricycle riding, and that the next time we went out together on wheels he'd drive. I didn't tell him anything about the stag hunt then, for he seemed to be in favor of doing all the talking himself; but after dinner, when we was all settled down quiet and comfortable, I told him and Mr. Poplington the story of the chase, and they both laughed, Mr. Poplington the most.
CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
It is now about a week since my stag hunt, and Jone and I have kept pretty quiet, taking short walks, and doing a good deal of reading in our garden whenever the sun shines into the little arbor there, and Mr. Poplington spends most of his time fishing. He works very hard at this, partly for the sake of his conscience, I think, for his bicycle trip made him lose three or four days he had taken a license for.
It was day before yesterday that rheumatism showed itself certain and plain in Jone. I had been thinking that perhaps I might have it first, but it wasn't so, and it began in Jone, which, though I don't want you to think me hard-hearted, madam, was perhaps better; for if it had not been for it, it might have been hard to get him out of this comfortable little cottage, where he'd be perfectly content to stay until it was time for us to sail for America. The beautiful greenness which spreads over the fields and hills, and not only the leaves of trees and vines, but down and around trunks and branches, is charming to look at and never to be forgotten; but when this moist greenness spreads itself to one's bones, especially when it creeps up to the parts that work together, then the soul of man longs for less picturesqueness and more easy-going joints. Jone says the English take their climate as they do their whiskey; and he calls it climate-and-water, with a very little of the first and a good deal of the other.
Of course, we must now leave Chedcombe; and when we talked to Mr. Poplington about it he said there was two places the English went to for their rheumatism. One was Bath, not far from here, and the other was Buxton, up in the north. As soon as I heard of Bath I was on pins and needles to go there, for in all the novel-reading I've done, which has been getting better and better in quality since the days when I used to read dime novels on the canal-boat, up to now when I like the best there is, I could not help knowing lots about Evelina and Beau Brummel, and the Pump Room, and the fine ladies and young bucks, and it would have joyed my soul to live and move where all these people had been, and where all these things had happened, even if fictitiously.
But Mr. Poplington came down like a shower on my notions, and said that Bath was very warm, and was the place where everybody went for their rheumatism in winter; but that Buxton was the place for the summer, because it was on high land and cool. This cast me down a good deal; for if we could have gone where I could have steeped my soul in romanticness, and at the same time Jone could have steeped himself in warm mineral water, there would not have been any time lost, and both of us would have been happier. But Mr. Poplington stuck to it that it would ruin anybody's constitution to go to such a hot place in August, and so I had to give it up.
So to-morrow we start for Buxton, which, from what I can make out, must be a sort of invalid picnic ground. I always did hate diseases and ailments, even of the mildest, when they go in caravan. I like to take people's sicknesses separate, because then I feel I might do something to help; but when they are bunched I feel as if it was sort of mean for me to go about cheerful and singing when other people was all grunting.
But we are not going straight to Buxton. As I have often said, Jone is a good fellow, and he told me last night if there was any bit of fancy scenery I'd like to stop on the way to the unromantic refuge he'd be glad to give me the chance, because he didn't suppose it would matter much if he put off his hot soaks for a few days. It didn't take me long to name a place I'd like to stop at—for most of my reading lately has been in the guide books, and I had crammed myself with the descriptions of places worth seeing, that would take us at least two years to look at—so I said I would like to go to the River Wye, which is said to be the most romantic stream in England, and when that is said, enough is said for me, so Jone agreed, and we are going to do the Wye on our way north.
There is going to be an election here in a few days, and this morning Jone and me hobbled into the village—that is, he hobbled in body, and I did in mind to think of his going along like a creaky wheelbarrow.
Everybody was agog about the election, and we was looking at some placards posted against a wall, when Mr. Locky, the innkeeper, came along, and after bidding us good-morning he asked Jone what party he belonged to. "I'm a Home Ruler," said Jone, "especially in the matter of tricycles." Mr. Locky didn't understand the last part of this speech, but I did, and he said, "I am glad you are not a Tory, sir. If you will read that, you will see what the Tory party has done for us," and he pointed out some lines at the bottom of a green placard, and these was the words: "Remember it was the Tory party that lost us the United States of America."
"Well," said Jone, "that seems like going a long way off to get some stones to throw at the Tories, but I feel inclined to heave a rock at them myself for the injury that party has done to America."
"To America!" said Mr. Locky, "Did the Tories ever harm America?"
"Of course they did," said Jone; "they lost us England, a very valuable country, indeed, and a great loss to any nation. If it had not been for the Tory party, Mr. Gladstone might now be in Washington as a senator from Middlesex."
'I'M A HOME RULER''I'M A HOME RULER'
'I'M A HOME RULER''I'M A HOME RULER'
Mr. Locky didn't understand one word of this, and so he asked Jone which leg his rheumatism was in; and when Jone told him it was his left leg he said it was a very curious thing, but if you would take a hundred men in Chedcombe there would be at least sixty with rheumatism in the left leg, and perhaps not more than twenty with it in the right, which was something the doctors never had explained yet.
It is awfully hard to go away and leave this lovely little cottage with its roses and vines, and Miss Pondar, and all its sweet-smelling comforts; and not only the cottage, but the village, and Mrs. Locky and her husband at the Bordley Arms, who couldn't have been kinder to us and more anxious to know what we wanted and what they could do. The fact is, that when English people do like Americans they go at it with just as much vim and earnestness as if they was helping Britannia to rule more waves.
While I was feeling badly at leaving Miss Pondar your letter came, dear madam, and I must say it gave heavy hearts to Jone and me, to me especially, as you can well understand. I went off into the summer-house, and as I sat there thinking and reading the letter over again, I do believe some tears came into my eyes; and Miss Pondar, who was working in the garden only a little way off—for if there is anything she likes to do it is to weed and fuss among the rose-bushes and other flowers, which she does whenever her other work gives her a chance—she happened to look up, and seeing that I was in trouble, she came right to me, like the good woman she is, and asked me if I had heard bad news, and if I would like a little gin and water.
I said that I had had bad news, but that I did not want any spirits, and she said she hoped nothing had happened to any of my family, and I told her not exactly; but in looking back it seemed as if it was almost that way. I thought I ought to tell her what had happened, for I could see that she was really feeling for me, and so I said: "Poor Lord Edward is dead. To be sure, he was very old, and I suppose we had not any right to think he'd live even as long as he did; and as he was nearly blind and had very poor use of his legs it was, perhaps, better that he should go. But when I think of what friends we used to be before I was married, I can't help feeling badly to think that he has gone; that when I go back to America he will not show he is glad to see me home again, which he would be if there wasn't another soul on the whole continent who felt that way."
Miss Pondar was now standing up with her hands folded in front of her, and her head bowed down as if she was walking behind a hearse with eight ostrich plumes on it. "Lord Edward," she said, in a melancholy, respectful voice, "and will his remains be brought to England for interment?"
"Oh, no," said I, not understanding what she was talking about. "I am sure he will be buried somewhere near his home, and when I go back his grave will be one of the first places I will visit."
A streak of bewilderment began to show itself in Miss Pondar's melancholy respectfulness, and she said: "Of course, when one lives in foreign parts one may die there, but I always thought in cases like that they were brought home to their family vaults."
It may seem strange for me to think of anything funny at a time like this, but when Miss Pondar mentioned family vaults when talking of Lord Edward, there came into my mind the jumps he used to make whenever he saw any of us coming home; but I saw what she was driving at and the mistake she had made. "Oh," I said, "he was not a member of the British nobility; he was a dog; Lord Edward was his name. I never loved any animal as I loved him."
I suppose, madam, that you must sometimes have noticed one of the top candles of a chandelier, when the room gets hot, suddenly bending over and drooping and shedding tears of hot paraffine on the candles below, and perhaps on the table; and if you can remember what that overcome candle looked like, you will have an idea of what Miss Pondar looked like when she found out Lord Edward was a dog. I think that for one brief moment she hugged to her bosom the fond belief that I was intimate with the aristocracy, and that a noble lord, had he not departed this life, would have been the first to welcome me home, and that she—she herself—was in my service. But the drop was an awful one. I could see the throes of mortified disappointment in her back, as she leaned over a bed of pinks, pulling out young plants, I am afraid, as well as weeds. When I looked at her, I was sorry I let her know it was a dog I mourned. She has tried so hard to make everything all right while we have been here, that she might just as well have gone on thinking that it was a noble earl who died.
To-morrow morning we shall have our last Devonshire clotted cream, for they tell me this is to be had only in the west of England, and when I think of the beautiful hills and vales of this country I shall not forget that.
Of course we would not have time to stay here longer, even if Jone hadn't got the rheumatism; but if he had to have it, for which I am as sorry as anybody can be, it is a lucky thing that he did have it just about the time that we ought to be going away, anyhow. And although I did not think, when we came to England, that we should ever go to Buxton, we are thankful that there is such a place to go to; although, for my part, I can't help feeling disappointed that the season isn't such that we could go to Bath, and Evelina and Beau Brummel.
W
BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER
e came to this queer old English town, not because it is any better than so many other towns, but because Mr. Poplington told us it was a good place for our headquarters while we was seeing the River Wye and other things in the neighborhood. This hotel is the best in the town and very well kept, so that Jone made his usual remark about its being a good place to stay in. We are near the point where the four principal streets of the town, called Northgate, Eastgate, Southgate, and Westgate, meet, and if there was nothing else to see it would be worth while to stand there and look at so much Englishism coming and going from four different quarters.
There is another hotel here, called the New Inn, that was recommended to us, but I thought we would not want to go there, for we came to see old England, and I don't want to see its new and shiny things, so we came to the Bell, as being more antique. But I have since found out that the New Inn was built in 1450 to accommodate the pilgrims who came to pay their respects to the tomb of Edward II. in the fine old cathedral here. But though I should like to live in a four-hundred-and forty-year-old house, we are very well satisfied where we are.
Two very good things come from Gloucester, for it is the well-spring of Sunday schools and vaccination. They keep here the horns of the cow that Dr. Jenner first vaccinated from, and not far from our hotel is the house of Robert Raikes. This is an old-fashioned timber house, and looks like a man wearing his skeleton outside of his skin. We are sorry Mr. Poplington couldn't come here with us, for he could have shown us a great many things; but he stayed at Chedcombe to finish his fishing, and he said he might meet us at Buxton, where he goes every year for his arm.
To see the River Wye you must go down it, so with just one handbag we took the train for the little town of Ross, which is near the beginning of the navigable part of the river—I might almost say the wadeable part, for I imagine the deepest soundings about Ross are not more than half a yard. We stayed all night at a hotel overlooking the valley of the little river, and as the best way to see this wonderful stream is to go down it in a rowboat, as soon as we reached Ross we engaged a boat and a man for the next morning to take us to Monmouth, which would be about a day's row, and give us the best part of the river. But I must say that when we looked out over the valley the prospect was not very encouraging, for it seemed to me that if the sun came out hot it would dry up that river, and Jone might not be willing to wait until the next heavy rain.
While we was at Chedcombe I read the "Maid of Sker," because its scenes are laid in the Bristol Channel, about the coast near where we was, and over in Wales. And when the next morning we went down to the boat which we was going to take our day's trip in, and I saw the man who was to row us, David Llewellyn popped straight into my mind.
This man was elderly, with gray hair, and a beard under his chin, with a general air of water and fish. He was good-natured and sociable from the very beginning. It seemed a shame that an old man should row two people so much younger than he was, but after I had looked at him pulling at his oars for a little while, I saw that there was no need of pitying him.
It was a good day, with only one or two drizzles in the morning, and we had not gone far before I found that the Wye was more of a river than I thought it was, though never any bigger than a creek. It was just about warm enough for a boat trip, though the old man told us there had been a "rime" that morning, which made me think of the "Ancient Mariner." The more the boatman talked and made queer jokes, the more I wanted to ask him his name; and I hoped he would say David Llewellyn, or at least David, and as a sort of feeler I asked him if he had ever seen a coracle. "A corkle?" said he. "Oh, yes, ma'am, I've seen many a one and rowed in them."
I couldn't wait any longer, and so I asked him his name. He stopped rowing and leaned on his oars and let the boat drift. "Now," said he, "if you've got a piece of paper and a pencil I wish you would listen careful and put down my name, and if you ever know of any other people in your country coming to the River Wye, I wish you would tell them my name, and say I am a boatman, and can take them down the river better than anybody else that's on it. My name is Samivel Jones. Be sure you've got that right, please—Samivel Jones. I was born on this river, and I rowed on it with my father when I was a boy, and I have rowed on it ever since, and now I am sixty-five years old. Do you want to know why this river is called the Wye? I will tell you. Wye means crooked, so this river is called the Wye because it is crooked. Wye, the crooked river."
There was no doubt about the old man's being right about the crookedness of the stream. If you have ever noticed an ant running over the floor you will have an idea how the Wye runs through this beautiful country. If it comes to a hill it doesn't just pass it and let you see one side of it, but it goes as far around it as it can, and then goes back again, and goes around some other hill or great rocky point, or a clump of woods, or anything else that travellers might like to see. At one place, called Symond's Yat, it makes a curve so great, that if we was to get out of our boat and walk across the land, we would have to walk less than half a mile before we came to the river again; but to row around the curve as we did, we had to go five miles.
Every now and then we came to rapids. I didn't count them, but I think there must have been about one to every mile, where the river-bed was full of rocks, and where the water rushed furiously around and over them. If we had been rowing ourselves we would have gone on shore and camped when we came to the first of these rapids, for we wouldn't have supposed our little boat could go through those tumbling, rushing waters; but old Samivel knew exactly how the narrow channel, just deep enough sometimes for our boat to float without bumping the bottom, runs and twists itself among the hidden rocks, and he'd stand up in the bow and push the boat this way and that until it slid into the quiet water again, and he sat down to his oars. After we had been through four or five of these we didn't feel any more afraid than if we had been sitting together on our own little back porch.
As for the banks of this river, they got more and more beautiful as we went on. There was high hills with some castles, woods and crags and grassy slopes, and now and then a lordly mansion or two, and great massive, rocky walls, bedecked with vines and moss, rising high up above our heads and shutting us out from the world.
Jone and I was filled as full as our minds could hold with the romantic loveliness of the river and its banks, and old Samivel was so pleased to see how we liked it—for I believe he looked upon that river as his private property—that he told us about everything we saw, and pointed out a lot of things we wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been for him, as if he had been a man explaining a panorama, and pointing out with a stick the notable spots as the canvas unrolled.
The only thing in his show which didn't satisfy him was two very fine houses which had both of them belonged to noble personages in days gone by, but which had been sold, one to a man who had made his money in tea, and the other to a man who had made money in cotton. "Think of that," said he; "cotton and tea, and living in such mansions as them are, once owned by lords. They are both good men, and gives a great deal to the poor, and does all they can for the country; but only think of it, madam, cotton and tea! But all that happened a good while ago, and the world is getting too enlightened now for such estates as them are to come to cotton and tea."
Sometimes we passed houses and little settlements, but, for the most part, the country was as wild as undiscovered lands, which, being that to me, I felt happier, I am sure, than Columbus did when he first sighted floating weeds. Jone was a good deal wound up too, for he had never seen anything so beautiful as all this. We had our luncheon at a little inn, where the bread was so good that for a time I forgot the scenery, and then we went on, passing through the Forest of Dean, lonely and solemn, with great oak and beech trees, and Robin Hood and his merry men watching us from behind the bushes for all we knew. Whenever the river twists itself around, as if to show us a new view, old Samivel would say: "Now isn't that the prettiest thing you've seen yet?" and he got prouder and prouder of his river every mile he rowed.
At one place he stopped and rested on his oars. "Now, then," said he, twinkling up his face as if he was really David Llewellyn showing us a fish with its eyes bulged out with sticks to make it look fresh, "as we are out on a kind of a lark, suppose we try a bit of a hecho," and then he turned to a rocky valley on his left, and in a voice like the man at the station calling out the trains he yelled, "Hello there, sir! What are you doing there, sir? Come out of that!" And when the words came back as if they had been balls batted against a wall, he turned and looked at us as proud and grinny as if the rocks had been his own baby saying "papa" and "mamma" for visitors.
Not long after this we came to a place where there was a wide field on one side, and a little way off we could see the top of a house among the trees. A hedge came across the field to the river, and near the bank was a big gate, and on this gate sat two young women, and down on the ground on the side of the hedge nearest to us was another young woman, and not far from her was three black hogs, two of them pointing their noses at her and grunting, and the other was grunting around a place where those young women had been making sketches and drawings, and punching his nose into the easels and portfolios on the ground. The young woman on the grass was striking at the hogs with a stick and trying to make them go away, which they wouldn't do; and just as we came near she dropped the stick and ran, and climbed up on the gate beside the others, after which all the hogs went to rooting among the drawing things.
As soon as Samivel saw what was going on he stopped his boat, and shouted to the hogs a great deal louder than he had shouted to the echo, but they didn't mind any more than they had minded the girl with the stick. "Can't we stop the boat," I said, "and get out and drive off those hogs? They will eat up all the papers and sketches."
"Just put me ashore," said Jone, "and I'll clear them out in no time;" and old Samivel rowed the boat close up to the bank.
But when Jone got suddenly up on his feet there was such a twitch across his face that I said to him, "Now just you sit down. If you go ashore to drive off those hogs you'll jump about so that you'll bring on such a rheumatism you can't sleep."
"I'll get out myself," said Samivel, "if I can find a place to fasten the boat to. I can't run her ashore here, and the current is strong."
"Don't you leave the boat," said I, for the thought of Jone and me drifting off and coming without him to one of those rapids sent a shudder through me; and as the stern of the boat where I sat was close to the shore I jumped with Jone's stick in my hand before either of them could hinder me. I was so afraid that Jone would do it that I was very quick about it.
The minute I left the boat Jone got ready to come after me, for he had no notion of letting me be on shore by myself, but the boat had drifted off a little, and old Samivel said:
"That is a pretty steep bank to get up with the rheumatism on you. I'll take you a little farther down, where I can ground the boat, and you can get off more steadier."
But this letter is getting as long as the River Wye itself, and I must stop it.