They aint a-going to starve, are they? said the gentleman from the boot-shop.
Ah! youd want to take a thing or two with you, retorted The Blue Posts, if you was a-going to cross the Atlantic in a small boat.
They aint a-going to cross the Atlantic, struck in Biggss boy; theyre a-going to find Stanley.
By this time, quite a small crowd had collected, and people were asking each other what was the matter. One party (the young and giddy portion of the crowd) held that it was a wedding, and pointed out Harris as the bridegroom; while the elder and more thoughtful among the populace inclined to the idea that it was a funeral, and that I was probably the corpses brother.
At last, an empty cab turned up (it is a street where, as a rule, and when they are not wanted, empty cabs pass at the rate of three a minute, and hang about, and get in your way), and packing ourselves and our belongings into it, and shooting out a couple of Montmorencys friends, who had evidently sworn never to forsake him, we drove away amidst the cheers of the crowd, Biggss boy shying a carrot after us for luck.
We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked where the eleven-five started from. Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterloo ever does know where a train is going to start from, or where a train when it does start is going to, or anything about it. The porter who took our things thought it would go from number two platform, while another porter, with whom he discussed the question, had heard a rumour that it would go from number one. The stationmaster, on the other hand, was convinced it would start from the local.
To put an end to the matter, we went upstairs, and asked the traffic superintendent, and he told us that he had just met a man, who said he had seen it at number three platform. We went to number three platform, but the authorities there said that they rather thought that train was the Southampton express, or else the Windsor loop. But they were sure it wasnt the Kingston train, though why they were sure it wasnt they couldnt say.
Then our porter said he thought that must be it on the high-level platform; said he thought he knew the train. So we went to the high-level platform, and saw the engine-driver, and asked him if he was going to Kingston. He said he couldnt say for certain of course, but that he rather thought he was. Anyhow, if he wasnt the 11.5 for Kingston, he said he was pretty confident he was the 9.32 for Virginia Water, or the 10 a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, or somewhere in that direction, and we should all know when we got there. We slipped half-a-crown into his hand, and begged him to be the 11.5 for Kingston.
Nobody will ever know, on this line, we said, what you are, or where youre going. You know the way, you slip off quietly and go to Kingston.
Well, I dont know, gents, replied the noble fellow, but I suppose some trains got to go to Kingston; and Ill do it. Gimme the half-crown.
Thus we got to Kingston by the London and South-Western Railway.
We learnt, afterwards, that the train we had come by was really the Exeter mail, and that they had spent hours at Waterloo, looking for it, and nobody knew what had become of it.
Our boat was waiting for us at Kingston just below bridge, and to it we wended our way, and round it we stored our luggage, and into it we stepped.
Are you all right, sir? said the man.
Right it is, we answered; and with Harris at the sculls and I at the tiller-lines, and Montmorency, unhappy and deeply suspicious, in the prow, out we shot on to the waters which, for a fortnight, were to be our home.
Chapter VI
Kingston.Instructive remarks on early English history.Instructive observations on carved oak and life in general.Sad case of Stivvings, junior.Musings on antiquity.I forget that I am steering.Interesting result.Hampton Court Maze.Harris as a guide.
It was a glorious morning, late spring or early summer, as you care to take it, when the dainty sheen of grass and leaf is blushing to a deeper green; and the year seems like a fair young maid, trembling with strange, wakening pulses on the brink of womanhood.
The quaint back streets of Kingston, where they came down to the waters edge, looked quite picturesque in the flashing sunlight, the glinting river with its drifting barges, the wooded towpath, the trim-kept villas on the other side, Harris, in a red and orange blazer, grunting away at the sculls, the distant glimpses of the grey old palace of the Tudors, all made a sunny picture, so bright but calm, so full of life, and yet so peaceful, that, early in the day though it was, I felt myself being dreamily lulled off into a musing fit.
I mused on Kingston, or Kyningestun, as it was once called in the days when Saxon kinges were crowned there. Great Ceasar crossed the river there, and the Roman legions camped upon its sloping uplands. Ceasar, like, in later years, Elizabeth, seems to have stopped everywhere: only he was more respectable than good Queen Bess; he didnt put up at the public-houses.
She was nuts on public-houses, was Englands Virgin Queen. Theres scarcely a pub. of any attractions within ten miles of London that she does not seem to have looked in at, or stopped at, or slept at, some time or other. I wonder now, supposing Harris, say, turned over a new leaf, and became a great and good man, and got to be Prime Minister, and died, if they would put up signs over the public-houses that he had patronised: Harris had a glass of bitter in this house; Harris had two of Scotch cold here in the summer of 88; Harris was chucked from here in December, 1886.
No, there would be too many of them! It would be the houses that he had never entered that would become famous. Only house in South London that Harris never had a drink in! The people would flock to it to see what could have been the matter with it.
How poor weak-minded King Edwy must have hated Kyningestun! The coronation feast had been too much for him. Maybe boars head stuffed with sugarplums did not agree with him (it wouldnt with me, I know), and he had had enough of sack and mead; so he slipped from the noisy revel to steal a quiet moonlight hour with his beloved Elgiva.