Chapter 9

You perhaps think that you know the Thames. You have been at Henley, no doubt, during regatta week, when both banks were flower-beds of blossoming parasols and full-blown picture-hats, the river a stretch of silver, crowded with boats, their occupants cheering like mad. Or you know Marlowe with its wide stream bordered with stately trees and statelier mansions, and Oxford with its grim buildings, and Windsor dominated by its huge pile of stone, the flag of the Empires floating from its top; and Maidenhead with its boats and launches, and lovely Cookham with its back water and quaint mill and quainter lock. You have rowed down beside them all in a shell, or have had glimpses of them from the train, or sat under the awnings of the launch or regular packet and watched the procession go by. All very charming and interesting, and, if you had but forty-eight hours in which to see all England, a profitable way of spending eight of them. And yet you have only skimmed the beautiful river's surface as a swallow skims a lake.

Try a punt once.

Pole in and out of the little back waters, lying away from the river, smothered in trees; float over the shallows dotted with pond-lilies; creep under drooping branches swaying with the current; stop at any one of a hundred landings, draw your boat up on the gravel, spring out and plunge into the thickets, flushing the blackbirds from their nests, or unpack your luncheon, spread your mattress, and watch the clouds sail over your head. Don't be in a hurry. Keep up this idling day in and day out, up and down, over and across, for a month or more, and you will get some faint idea of how picturesque, how lovely, and how restful this rarest of all the sylvan streams of England can be.

If, like me, you can't pole a punt its length without running into a mud-bank or afoul of the bushes, then send for Fin. If he isn't at Sonning you will hear of him at Cookham or Marlowe or London--but find him wherever he is. He will prolong your life and loosen every button on your waistcoat. Fin is the unexpected, the ever-bubbling, and the ever-joyous; restless as a school-boy ten minutes before recess, quick as a grasshopper and lively as a cricket. He is, besides, brimful and spilling over with a quality of fun that is geyserlike in its spontaneity and intermittent flow. When he laughs, which he does every other minute, the man ploughing across the river, or the boy fishing, or the girl driving the cow, turn their heads and smile. They can't help it. In this respect he is better than a dozen farmers each with his two blades of grass. Fin plants a whole acre of laughs at once.

On one of my joyous days--they were all joyous days, this one most of all--I was up the backwater, the "Mud Lark" (Fin's name for the punt) anchored in her element by two poles, one at each end, to keep her steady, when Fin broke through a new aperture and became reminiscent.

I had dotted in the outlines of the old footpath with the meadows beyond, the cotton-wool clouds sailing overhead--only in England do I find these clouds--and was calling to the restless Irishman to sit still or I would send him ashore ... wet, when he answered with one of his bubbling outbreaks:

"I don't wonder yer hot, sor, but I git that fidgety. I been so long doin' nothin'; two months now, sor, since I been on a box."

I worked on for a minute without answering. Hanging wall-paper by standing on a box was probably the way they did it in the country, the ceilings being low.

"No work?" I said, aimlessly. As long as he kept still I didn't care what he talked or laughed about.

"Plinty, sor--an' summer's the time to do it. So many strangers comin' an' goin', but they won't let me at it. I'm laid off for a month yet; that's why your job come in handy, sor."

"Row with your Union?" I remarked, listlessly, my mind still intent on watching a sky tint above the foreground trees.

"No--wid the perlice. A little bit of a scrimmage wan night in Trafalgar Square. It was me own fault, sor, for I oughter a-knowed better. It was about three o'clock in the mornin', sor, and I was outside one o' them clubs just below Piccadilly, when one o' them young chaps come out wid three or four others, all b'ilin' drunk--one was Lord Bentig--jumps into a four-wheeler standin' by the steps an' hollers out to the rest of us: 'A guinea to the man that gits to Trafalgar Square fust; three minutes' start,' and off he wint and we after him, leavin' wan of the others behind wid his watch in his hand."

I laid down my palette and looked up. Paper-hanging evidently had its lively side.

"Afoot?"

"All four of 'em, sor--lickety-split and hell's loose. I come near runnin' over a bobbie as I turned into Pall Mall, but I dodged him and kep' on and landed second, with the mare doubled up in a heap and the rig a-top of her and one shaft broke. Lord Bentig and the other chaps that was wid him was standin' waitin', and when we all fell in a heap he nigh bu'st himself a-laughin'. He went bail for us, of course, and give the three of us ten bob apiece, but I got laid off for three months, and come up here, where me old mother lives and I kin pick up a job."

"Hanging paper?" I suggested with a smile.

"Yes, or anything else. Ye see, sor, I'm handy carpenterin', or puttin' on locks, or the likes o' that, or paintin', or paper-hangin', or mendin' stoves or tinware. So when they told me a painter chap wanted me, I looked over me perfessions and picked out the wan I tho't would suit him best. But it's drivin' a cab I'm good at; been on the box fourteen year come next Christmas. Ye don't mind, do ye, sor, my not tellin' ye before? Lord Bentig'll tell ye all about me next time ye see him in Lunnon." This touch was truly Finian. "He's cousin, ye know, sor, to this young chap what's here at the inn wid his bride. They wouldn't know me, sor, nor don't, but I've driv her father many a time. My rank used to be near his house on Bolton Terrace. I had a thing happen there one night that--more water? Yes, sor--and the other brush--the big one? Yes, sor--thank ye, sor. I don't shake, do I, sor?"

"No, Fin; go on."

"Well, I was tellin' ye about the night Sir Henry's man--that's the lady's father, sor--come to the rank where I sat on me box. It was about ten o'clock--rainin' hard and bad goin', it was that slippery.

"'His Lordship wants ye in a hurry, Fin,' and he jumped inside.

"When I got there I see something was goin' on--a party or something--the lights was lit clear up to the roof.

"'His Lordship's waitin' in the hall for ye,' said his man, and I jumped off me box and wint inside.

"'Fin,' said His Lordship, speakin' low, 'there's a lady dinin' wid me and the wine's gone to her head, and she's that full that if she waits until her own carriage comes for her she won't git home at all! Go back and get on yer cab wid yer fingers to yer hat, and I'll bring her out and put her in meself. It's dark and she won't know the difference. Take her down to Cadogan Square--I don't know the number, but ye can't miss it, for it's the fust white house wid geraniums in the winders. When ye git there ye're to git down, help her up the steps, keepin' yer mouth shut, unlock the door, and set her down on the sofa. You'll find the sofa in the parlor on the right, and can't miss it. Then lay the key on the mantel--here it is. After she's down, step out softly, close the door behind ye, ring the bell, and some of her servants will come and put her to bed. She's often took that way and they know what to do.' Then he says, lookin' at me straight, 'I sent for you, Fin, for I know I kin trust ye. Come here tomorrow and let me know how she got through and I'll give ye five bob.'

"Well, sor, in a few minutes out she come, leanin' on His Lordship's arm, steppin' loike she had spring-halt, and takin' half the sidewalk to turn in.

"'Good-night, Your Ladyship,' says His Lordship.

"'Good-night, Sir Henry,' she called back, her head out of the winder, and off I driv.

"I turned into the Square, found the white house wid the geraniums, helps her out of me cab and steadied her up the steps, pulled the key out, and was just goin' to put it in the lock when she fell up agin the door and open it went. The gas was turned low in the hall, so that she wouldn't know me if she looked at me.

"I found the parlor, but the lights were out; so widout lookin' for the sofa--I was afraid somebody'd come and catch me--I slid her into a rockin'-chair, laid the key on the hall-table, shut the door softlike, rang the bell as if there was a fire next door, jumped on me box, and driv off.

"The next mornin' I went to see His Lordship.

"'Did ye land her all right, Fin?'

"'I did, sor,' I says.

"'Had ye any trouble wid the key?'

"'No, sor,' I says, 'the door was open.'

"'That's queer,' he says; 'maybe her husband came in earlier and forgot to shut it. And ye put her on the sofa----'

"'No, sor, in a big chair.'

"'In the parlor on the right?'

"'No, sor, in a little room on the left--down one step----'

"He stopped and looked at me.

"'Te're sure ye put her in the fust white house?'

"'I am, sor.'

"'Wid geraniums in the winder?'

"'Yes, sor.'

"'Red?' he says.

"'No, white,' I says.

"'On the north side of the Square?

"'No,' I says, 'on the south.'

"'My God! Fin,' he says, 'ye left her in the wrong house!'"

It was I who shook the boat this time.

"Oh, ye needn't laugh, sor; it was no laughin' matter. I got me five bob, but I lost His Lordship's custom, and I didn't dare go near Cadogan Square for a month."

These disclosures opened up a new and wider horizon. Heretofore I had associated Fin with simple country life--as a cheery craftsman--a Jack-of-all-trades: one day attired in overalls, with paste-pot, shears, and ladder, brightening the walls of the humble cottagers, and the next in polo cap and ragged white sweater, the gift of some summer visitor (his invariable costume with me), adapting himself to the peaceful needs of the river. Here, on the contrary and to my great surprise, was a cosmopolitan; a man versed in the dark and devious ways of a great city; familiar with life in its widest sense; one who had touched on many sides and who knew the cafés, the rear entrances to the theatres, and the short cut to St. John's Wood with the best and worst of them. These discoveries came with a certain shock, but they did not impair my interest in my companion. They really endeared him to me all the more.

After this I was no longer content with listening to his rambling dissertations on whatever happened to rise in his memory and throat. I began to direct the output. It was not a difficult task; any incident or object, however small, served my purpose.

The four-inch dog acted as valve this morning.

Somebody had trodden on His Dogship; some unfortunate biped born to ill-luck. In and about Sonning to tread on a dog or to cause any animal unnecessary pain is looked upon as an unforgiveable crime. Dogs are made to be hugged and coddled and given the best cushion in the boat. "A man, a girl, and a dog" is as common as "a man, a punt, and an inn."

Instantly the four-inch morsel--four inches, now that I think of it, is about right; six inches is too long--this morsel, I say, gave a yell as shrill as a launch-whistle and as fetching as a baby's cry. Instantly three chambermaids, two barmaids, the two maiden sisters who were breakfasting on the shady side of the inn gable, and the dog's owner, who, in a ravishing gown, was taking her coffee under one of the Japanese umbrellas, came rushing out of their respective hiding-places, impelled by an energy and accompanied by an impetuousness rarely seen except perhaps in some heroic attempt to save a drowning child sinking for the last time.

"The darlin'"--this from Katy the barmaid, who reached him first--"who's stomped on him?"

"How outrageous to be so cruel!"--this from the two maiden sisters.

"Give him to me, Katy--oh, the brute of a man!"--this from the fair owner.

The solitary Englishman with his book and his furled umbrella, who in his absorption had committed the crime, strode on without even raising his hat in apology.

"D----d little beast!" I heard him mutter as he neared the boat-house where Fin and I were stowing cargo. "Ought to be worn on a watch-chain or in her buttonhole."

Fin had his hand on his lips keeping his laughing apparatus in order until the solitary disappeared down the path to the trees, then he leaned my way.

"I know him, sor," he whispered. "He's a barrister down in Temple Bar. He don't remember me, sor, but I know him. He's always treadin' on something--something alive--always, sor, and wid both feet! He trod on me once. I thought it was him when I see him fust--but I wasn't sure till I asked Landlord Hull about him."

"How came you to know him?"

"Well, sor, he had an old lady on his list two years ago that was always disputin' distances and goin' to law about her cab-fares. I picked her up one day in St. James Street and druv her to Kensington Gardens and charged her the rates, and she kicked and had me up before the magistrate, and this old ink-bottle appeared for her. She's rich and always in hot water. Well, we had it measured and I was right, and it cost her me fare and fifteen bob besides. When it was figured up she owed me sixpence more measurement I hadn't charged her for the first time, and I summoned her and made her pay it and twelve bob more to teach her manners. What pay he got I don't know, but I got me sixpence. He was born back here about a mile--that's why he comes here for his holiday."

Fin stopped stowing cargo--two bottles of soda, a piece of ice in a bucket, two canvases, my big easel and a lunch-basket--and moving his cap back from his freckled forehead said, with as much gravity as he could maintain:

"I ought to have been a barrister, sor; I started as one."

The statement did not surprise me. Had he added that he had coached the winning crew of the regatta the year before, laid the marquetry floors of Cliveden (not far away), or led the band at the late Lord Mayor's show, I should have received his statements with equal equanimity. So I simply remarked, "When was that, Fin"? quite as I should had I been gathering details for his biography--my only anxiety being to get the facts chronologically correct.

"When I was a gossoon of twenty, sor--maybe eighteen--I'm fifty now, so it's far back enough, God knows. And it all happened, too, not far from that old ink-bottle's place in Temple Bar. I was lookin' at it wan day last winter when I had a fare down there that I took up in old Bond Street. I did the sweepin' out and startin' fires. Wan day wan of the clerks got fired because he couldn't serve a writ on another barrister chap who owed a bill that me boss was tryin' to collect. Nobody could git into his rooms, try every way they could. He had nigh broke the head o' wan o' the young fellers in the office who tried it the day before. He niver come out, but had his grub sent him. This had been goin' on for a month. All kinds o' games had been put up on him and he beat 'em all.

"'I'll do it,' I says, 'in a week's time or less.' The manager was goin' through the office and heard the laugh they give me. 'What's this?' he says, cross like. 'Fin says he kin serve the writ,' the clerk says. 'I kin,' I says, startin' up, 'or I'll throw up me job.'

"'Give him the writ,' he says, 'and give him two days off. It kin do no harm for him to try.'

"Well, I found the street, and went up the stairs and read the name on the door and heard somebody walkin' around, and knew he was in. Then I lay around on the other side o' the street to see what I could pick up in the way o' the habits o' the rat. I knew he couldn't starve for a week at a time, and that something must be goin' in, and maybe I could follow up and git me foot in the door before he could close it; but I soon found that wouldn't work. Pretty soon a can o' milk come and went up in a basket that he let down from his winder. As he leaned out I saw his head, and it was a worse carrot than me own. Then along come a man with a bag o' coal on his back and a bit o' card in his hand with the coal-yard on it and the rat's name underneath, a-lookin' up at the house and scratchin' his head as to where he was goin'.

"I crossed over and says, 'Who are ye lookin' for'? And he hands me the card. 'I'm his man,' I says, 'and I been waitin' for ye--me master's sick and don't want no noise, and if ye make any I'll lose me place. I'll carry the bag up and dump it and bring ye the bag back and, shillin' for yer trouble. Wait here. Hold on,' I says; 'take me hat and let me have yours, for I don't git a good hat every day, and the bag's that dirty it'll spile it.'

"'Go on,' he says; 'I've carried it all the way from the yard and me back's broke.' Well, I pulled his hat ever me eyes and started up the stairs wid the bag on me shoulder. When I got to the fust landin' I run me hands over the bag, gittin' 'em good and black, then I smeared me face, and up I went another flight.

"'Who's there?' he says, when I knocked.

"'Coals,' I says.

"'Where from?' he says.

"I told him the name on the card. He opened the door an inch and I could see a chain between the crack.

"'Let me see yer face,' he says. I twisted it out from under the edge of the bag. 'All right,' he says, and he slipped back the chain and in I went, stoopin' down as if it weighed a ton.

"'Where'll I put it?' I says.

"'In the box,' he says, walkin' toward the grate. 'Have ye brought the bill?'

"'I have,' I says, still keepin' me head down. 'It's in me side pocket. Pull it out, please, me hand's that dirty'--and out come the writ!

"Ye ought to have seen his face when he read it. He made a jump for the door, but I got there fust and downstairs in a tumble, and fell in a heap at the foot with everything he could lay his hands on comin' after me--tongs, shovel, and poker.

"I got a raise of five bob when I went back and ten bob besides from the boss.

"I ought to have stayed at the law, sor; I'd be a magistrate by now a-sittin' on a sheepskin instead of ------

"Where'll I put this big canvas, sor--up agin the bow or laid flat? The last coat ain't dry yet," he muttered to himself, touching my picture with his finger in true paper-hanger style. "Oh, yes, I see--all ready, sor, ye kin step in. Same place we painted yesterday, sor?--up near the mill? All right, sor." And we pushed out into the stream.

These talks with Fin are like telephone messages from the great city hardly an hour away. They always take place in the open, while I am floating among pond-lilies or drifting under wide-spreading trees, their drooping leaves dabbling in the silent current like children's fingers, or while I am sitting under skies as blue as any that bend above my Beloved City by the Sea; often, too, when the delicious silence about me is broken only by the lapping of the water around my punt, the sharpening of a bit of charcoal, or the splash of a fish. That his stories are out of key with my surroundings, often reminding me of things I have come miles over the sea to forget, somehow adds to their charm.

There is no warning given. Suddenly, and apparently without anything that leads up to the subject in mind, this irrepressible Irishman breaks out, and before I am aware of the change, the glory of the morning and all that it holds for me of beauty has faded out of the slide of my mental camera and another has taken its place. Again I am following Fin's cab through the mazes of smoky, seething London, now waiting outside a concert-hall for some young blood, or shopping along Regent Street, or at full tilt to catch a Channel train at Charing Cross--each picture enriched by a running account of personal adventure that makes them doubly interesting.

"You wouldn't mind, sor," he begins, "if I tell ye of a party of three I took home from a grand ball--one of the toppy balls of the winter, in one o' them big halls on the Strand? Two o' them Was dressed like the Royal family in satins that stuck out like a haystack and covered with diamonds that would hurt your eyes to look at 'em--" And then in his inimitable dialect--impossible to reproduce by any combination of vowels at my command, and punctured every few minutes by ringing laughs that can be heard half a mile away--follows a description of how one of his fares, Ikey by name, the son of the stoutest of the women, by a sudden lurch of his cab--Ikey rode outside--while rounding into a side street, was landed in the mud.

"Oh, that was a great night, sor," he rattles on. "Ye ought to 'a' seen him when I picked him up. He looked as if they'd been a-swobbin' the cobbles wid him. 'Oh, me son! me son! it's kilt ye are!' she hollered out, clawin' him wid both hands, and up they hauled him all over them satin dresses! And where do ye think I took 'em, sor? To Hanover Square, or out by St. James Park? No, sor, not a bit of it! Down in an alley in Whitechapel, sor, that ye'd be afraid to walk through after sundown, and into a shop wid three balls over it. What do ye think o' that, sor?"

Or he launches forth into an account of how he helped to rescue a woman's child from the clutches of her brutal husband; and of the race out King's Road followed by the husband in a hansom, and of the watchful bobbie who, to relieve a threatened block in the street, held up the pursuing hansom at the critical moment, thus saving the escaping child, half-smothered in a blanket, tight locked in its mother's arms, and earning for Fin the biggest fare he ever got in his life.

"Think of it, sor! Fifteen bob for goin' a mile, she a-hollerin' all the time that she'd double the fare if I kep' ahead. But, Lord love ye, sor, she needn't 'a' worried; me old plug had run in the Derby wance, and for a short spurt like that he was game back to the stump of his tail."

* * * * *

When the last morning of his enforced exile arrived and Fin, before I was half-dressed, presented himself outside my bedroom door, an open letter in his hand, not a trace of the punt-poling Irishman was visible in his make-up!

He wore a glazed white tile, a yellow-brown coat with three capes, cut pen-wiper fashion, and a pair of corduroy trousers whose fulness concealed in part the ellipse of his legs.

"Here's a letter from me boss, sor," he blurted out, holding it toward me. "He says I kin go to work in the mornin'. Ye don't mind, do ye, sor?"

"Of course I mind, Fin; I'll have trouble to fill your place. Are you sorry to leave?"

"Am I sorry, sor? No!--savin' yer presence, I'm glad. What's the good of the country, anyhow, sor, except to make picters in? Of course, it's different wid you, sor, not knowin' the city, but for me--why God rest yer soul, sor, I wouldn't give one cobble of the Strand no bigger'n me fist for the best farm in Surrey.

"Call me, sor, next time ye're passin' my rank--any time after twelve at night, and I'll show ye fun enough to last ye yer life."

Something dropped out of the landscape that day--something of its brilliancy, color, and charm. The water seemed sluggish, the sky-tones dull, the meadows flat and commonplace.

It must have been Fin's laugh!

LONG JIM

Jim met me at the station. I knew it was Jim when I caught sight of him loping along the platform, craning his neck, his head on one side as if in search of someone. He had the same stoop in his shoulders; the same long, disjointed, shambling body--six feet and more of it--that had earned him his soubriquet.