In the forenoon they would head up stream--young men with their sweethearts; nephews taking out their rich old aunts; husbands and wives (some of them pairs, some of them odd ones); stylish-looking girls with cousins; energetic-looking men with dogs; high-class silent parties; low-class noisy parties; quarrelsome family parties--boatload after boatload they went by, wet, but still hopeful, pointing out bits of blue sky to each other.
In the evening they would return, drenched and gloomy, saying disagreeable things to one another.
One couple, and one couple only, out of the many hundreds that passed under our review, came back from the ordeal with pleasant faces. He was rowing hard and singing, with a handkerchief tied round his head to keep his hat on, and she was laughing at him, while trying to hold up an umbrella with one hand and steer with the other.
There are but two explanations to account for people being jolly on the river in the rain. The one I dismissed as being both uncharitable and improbable. The other was creditable to the human race, and, adopting it, I took off my cap to this damp but cheerful pair as they went by. They answered with a wave of the hand, and Istood looking after them till they disappeared in the mist.
I am inclined to think that those young people, if they be still alive, are happy. Maybe, fortune has been kind to them, or maybe she has not, but in either event they are, I am inclined to think, happier than are most people.
Now and again, the daily tornado would rage with such fury as to defeat its own purpose by prematurely exhausting itself. On these rare occasions we would sit out on the deck, and enjoy the unwonted luxury of fresh air.
I remember well those few pleasant evenings: the river, luminous with the drowned light, the dark banks where the night lurked, the storm-tossed sky, jewelled here and there with stars.
It was delightful not to hear for an hour or so the sullen thrashing of the rain; but to listen to the leaping of the fishes, the soft swirl raised by some water-rat, swimming stealthily among the rushes, the restless twitterings of the few still wakeful birds.
An old corncrake lived near to us, and the way he used to disturb all the other birds, and keep them from going to sleep, was shameful. Amenda, who was town-bred, mistook him at first for one of those cheap alarm clocks, and wondered who was winding him up, and why they went on doing it all night; and, above all, why they didn't oil him.
He would begin his unhallowed performance about dusk, just as every respectable bird was preparing to settle down for the night. Afamily of thrushes had their nest a few yards from his stand, and they used to get perfectly furious with him.
"There's that fool at it again," the female thrush would say; "why can't he do it in the day-time if he must do it at all?" (She spoke, of course, in twitters, but I am confident the above is a correct translation.)After a while, the young thrushes would wake up and begin chirping, and then the mother would get madder than ever.
"Can't you say something to him?" she would cry indignantly to her husband. "How do you think the children can get to sleep, poor things, with that hideous row going on all night? Might just as well be living in a saw-mill."Thus adjured, the male thrush would put his head over the nest, and call out in a nervous, apologetic manner:-"I say, you know, you there, I wish you wouldn't mind being quiet a bit. My wife says she can't get the children to sleep. It's too bad, you know, 'pon my word it is.""Gor on," the corncrake would answer surlily. "You keep your wife herself quiet; that's enough for you to do." And on he would go again worse than before.
Then a mother blackbird, from a little further off, would join in the fray.
"Ah, it's a good hiding he wants, not a talking to. And if I was a cock, I'd give it him." (This remark would be made in a tone of withering contempt, and would appear to bear reference to some previous discussion.)"You're quite right, ma'am," Mrs. Thrush would reply. "That's what I tell my husband, but" (with rising inflection, so that every lady in the plantation might hear) "HE wouldn't move himself, bless you--no, not if I and the children were to die before his eyes for want of sleep.""Ah, he ain't the only one, my dear," the blackbird would pipe back, "they're all alike"; then, in a voice more of sorrow than of anger:-"but there, it ain't their fault, I suppose, poor things. If you ain't got the spirit of a bird you can't help yourself."I would strain my ears at this point to hear if the male blackbird was moved at all by these taunts, but the only sound I could ever detect coming from his neighbourhood was that of palpably exaggerated snoring.
By this time the whole glade would be awake, expressing views concerning that corncrake that would have wounded a less callous nature.
"Blow me tight, Bill," some vulgar little hedge-sparrow would chirp out, in the midst of the hubbub, "if I don't believe the gent thinks 'e's a-singing.""'Tain't 'is fault," Bill would reply, with mock sympathy.
"Somebody's put a penny in the slot, and 'e can't stop 'isself."Irritated by the laugh that this would call forth from the younger birds, the corncrake would exert himself to be more objectionable than ever, and, as a means to this end, would commence giving his marvellous imitation of the sharpening of a rusty saw by a steel file.
But at this an old crow, not to be trifled with, would cry out angrily:-"Stop that, now. If I come down to you I'll peck your cranky head off, I will."And then would follow silence for a quarter of an hour, after which the whole thing would begin again.