We found out the woman's story afterwards. Of course it was the old, old
vulgar tragedy. She had loved and been deceived - or had deceived
herself. Anyhow, she had sinned - some of us do now and then - and her
family and friends, naturally shocked and indignant, had closed their
doors against her.
Left to fight the world alone, with the millstone of her shame around her
neck, she had sunk ever lower and lower. For a while she had kept both
herself and the child on the twelve shillings a week that twelve hours'
drudgery a day procured her, paying six shillings out of it for the
child, 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 very
slight bond as that between them; and one day, I suppose, the pain and
the 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 appeal
to friends, but, against the chill wall of their respectability, the
voice of the erring outcast fell unheeded; and then she had gone to see
her child - had held it in her arms and kissed it, in a weary, dull sort
of way, and without betraying any particular emotion of any kind, and had
left it, after putting into its hand a penny box of chocolate she had
bought it, and afterwards, with her last few shillings, had taken a
ticket and come down to Goring.
It seemed that the bitterest thoughts of her life must have centred about
the wooded reaches and the bright green meadows around Goring; but women
strangely hug the knife that stabs them, and, perhaps, amidst the gall,
there may have mingled also sunny memories of sweetest hours, spent upon
those shadowed deeps over which the great trees bend their branches down
so 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 the
waters, she stretched her arms out to the silent river that had known her
sorrow and her joy. And the old river had taken her into its gentle
arms, and had laid her weary head upon its bosom, and had hushed away the
pain.
Thus had she sinned in all things - sinned in living and in dying. God
help her! and all other sinners, if any more there be.
Goring on the left bank and Streatley on the right are both or either
charming places to stay at for a few days. The reaches down to
Pangbourne woo one for a sunny sail or for a moonlight row, and the
country round about is full of beauty. We had intended to push on to
Wallingford that day, but the sweet smiling face of the river here lured
us to linger for a while; and so we left our boat at the bridge, and went
up into Streatley, and lunched at the "Bull," much to Montmorency's
satisfaction.
They say that the hills on each ride of the stream here once joined and
formed a barrier across what is now the Thames, and that then the river
ended there above Goring in one vast lake. I am not in a position either
to contradict or affirm this statement. I simply offer it.
It is an ancient place, Streatley, dating back, like most river-side
towns and villages, to British and Saxon times. Goring is not nearly so
pretty 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 in
case you want to slip off without paying your hotel bill.
CHAPTER XVII.
WASHING DAY. - FISH AND FISHERS. - ON THE ART OF ANGLING. - A
CONSCIENTIOUS FLY-FISHER. - A FISHY STORY.
WE stayed two days at Streatley, and got our clothes washed. We had
tried washing them ourselves, in the river, under George's
superintendence, and it had been a failure. Indeed, it had been more
than a failure, because we were worse off after we had washed our clothes
than we were before. Before we had washed them, they had been very, very
dirty, it is true; but they were just wearable. AFTER we had washed them
- well, the river between Reading and Henley was much cleaner, after we
had washed our clothes in it, than it was before. All the dirt contained
in the river between Reading and Henley, we collected, during that wash,
and worked it into our clothes.
The washerwoman at Streatley said she felt she owed it to herself to
charge us just three times the usual prices for that wash. She said it
had not been like washing, it had been more in the nature of excavating.
We paid the bill without a murmur.
The neighbourhood of Streatley and Goring is a great fishing centre.
There is some excellent fishing to be had here. The river abounds in
pike, roach, dace, gudgeon, and eels, just here; and you can sit and fish
for them all day.
Some people do. They never catch them. I never knew anybody catch
anything, up the Thames, except minnows and dead cats, but that has
nothing to do, of course, with fishing! The local fisherman's guide
doesn't say a word about catching anything. All it says is the place is
"a good station for fishing;" and, from what I have seen of the district,
I am quite prepared to bear out this statement.
There is no spot in the world where you can get more fishing, or where
you can fish for a longer period. Some fishermen come here and fish for
a day, and others stop and fish for a month. You can hang on and fish
for a year, if you want to: it will be all the same.
The ANGLER'S GUIDE TO THE THAMES says that "jack and perch are also to be
had about here," but there the ANGLER'S GUIDE is wrong. Jack and perch
may BE about there. Indeed, I know for a fact that they are. You can
SEE them there in shoals, when you are out for a walk along the banks:
they come and stand half out of the water with their mouths open for
biscuits. And, if you go for a bathe, they crowd round, and get in your
way, and irritate you. But they are not to be "had" by a bit of worm on
the end of a hook, nor anything like it - not they!
I am not a good fisherman myself. I devoted a considerable amount of
attention to the subject at one time, and was getting on, as I thought,
fairly well; but the old hands told me that I should never be any real
good at it, and advised me to give it up. They said that I was an
extremely neat thrower, and that I seemed to have plenty of gumption for
the thing, and quite enough constitutional laziness. But they were sure
I should never make anything of a fisherman. I had not got sufficient
imagination.
They said that as a poet, or a shilling shocker, or a reporter, or
anything of that kind, I might be satisfactory, but that, to gain any
position as a Thames angler, would require more play of fancy, more power
of invention than I appeared to possess.
Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a
good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing;
but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest
tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the
embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous -
almost of pedantic - veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.
Anybody can come in and say, "Oh, I caught fifteen dozen perch yesterday
evening;" or "Last Monday I landed a gudgeon, weighing eighteen pounds,
and measuring three feet from the tip to the tail."
There is no art, no skill, required for that sort of thing. It shows
pluck, but that is all.
No; your accomplished angler would scorn to tell a lie, that way. His
method is a study in itself.
He comes in quietly with his hat on, appropriates the most comfortable
chair, lights his pipe, and commences to puff in silence. He lets the
youngsters brag away for a while, and then, during a momentary lull, he
removes the pipe from his mouth, and remarks, as he knocks the ashes out
against the bars:
"Well, I had a haul on Tuesday evening that it's not much good my telling
anybody about."
"Oh! why's that?" they ask.
"Because I don't expect anybody would believe me if I did," replies the
old fellow calmly, and without even a tinge of bitterness in his tone, as
he refills his pipe, and requests the landlord to bring him three of
Scotch, cold.
There is a pause after this, nobody feeling sufficiently sure of himself
to contradict the old gentleman. So he has to go on by himself without
any encouragement.
"No," he continues thoughtfully; "I shouldn't believe it myself if
anybody told it to me, but it's a fact, for all that. I had been sitting
there all the afternoon and had caught literally nothing - except a few
dozen dace and a score of jack; and I was just about giving it up as a
bad job when I suddenly felt a rather smart pull at the line. I thought
it was another little one, and I went to jerk it up. Hang me, if I could
move the rod! It took me half-an-hour - half-an-hour, sir! - to land
that fish; and every moment I thought the line was going to snap! I
reached him at last, and what do you think it was? A sturgeon! a forty
pound sturgeon! taken on a line, sir! Yes, you may well look surprised -
I'll have another three of Scotch, landlord, please."
And then he goes on to tell of the astonishment of everybody who saw it;
and what his wife said, when he got home, and of what Joe Buggles thought
about it.
I asked the landlord of an inn up the river once, if it did not injure
him, sometimes, listening to the tales that the fishermen about there
told him; and he said:
"Oh, no; not now, sir. It did used to knock me over a bit at first, but,
lor love you! me and the missus we listens to `em all day now.
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