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Chapter 2

It was a beautiful morning, late spring or early summer, when the grasses and leaves

shone a deep green.

The old streets of Kingston looked picturesque in the sunlight.

Harris, in his red and orange blazer, was rowing the boat.

The river was shining, and you could see the old grey palace of the tutors in the distance.

It was a sunny view, bright and calm and full of life.

I was so moved by the beauty around me that I started daydreaming.

I thought about the history of Kingston, the kings and queens that ruled the city,

and the old houses on the roads.

I thought about our love for old things and antiques, and about how the things we

considered to be treasures today were in fact ordinary objects of the past.

I was lost in thought when suddenly Harris dropped the oars, got up, sat on his back,

and lifted his legs up in the air.

Montmorrancy howled and jumped up.

I was surprised.

Hey, what's wrong, I asked?

Harris replied by using some bad language that I will not repeat here.

We had almost got into an accident and it was my fault, but nothing excuses using bad language.

As I was thinking of other things, I had forgotten that I was steering the boat.

Our boat had got mixed up with the towpath.

Harris said it was my turn to row the boat, and I picked up the oars and started rowing.

As we passed Hampton Court, he asked me if I had ever been in the maze there.

He said one time he went to the maze to show his cousin the way.

He had studied it in a map, and it had seemed simple.

But when they got there, Harris realized the map wasn't anything like the real maze.

We'll just go in here so that you can say you've been, he said to his cousin.

It's silly they call it a maze, it's so simple.

We'll just walk around for ten minutes and then get some lunch.

Soon after they got inside, they met some people who said they'd been there for forty -five minutes.

Harris said they could follow him if they wanted.

They thanked him and followed.

As they walked, they picked up some other people who wanted to get out as well.

Then, more and more people joined them.

People who had given up hope of ever getting out or ever seeing their family and friends again joined the group.

Harris said there were probably twenty people following him.

Harris kept turning right, but it seemed a long way.

His cousin said they had already walked some two miles already.

Then, they saw a small bread bun on the ground, and the cousin said he had noticed it there seven minutes ago.

Harris said it was impossible, but a woman in the group said she had taken it from her child and thrown it there herself.

She also said she wished she had never met Harris.

Harris got mad and showed his map.

Harris suggested going back to the entrance and beginning again.

They turned around and started walking in the opposite direction.

About ten minutes passed, and they found themselves in the center of the maze.

They did not know where they were, so they checked the map again.

It looked very simple, and they started once again.

And three minutes later, they were in the center again.

After that, they simply couldn't get anywhere else.

Whatever way they turned, they kept coming back to the middle.

Harris took out his map again, but the sight of it only made the group angry.

Harris said that he felt he had become unpopular.

They all got crazy at last and called the keeper.

The man came and climbed up a ladder outside the maze and shouted out directions,

but they were also confused by then that they were incapable of understanding what he was saying.

So the man asked them to stop where they were.

He would come to them.

He climbed down and entered the maze.

Unfortunately, the keeper was a young man and knew at the job.

When he got in, he couldn't find them, and as he walked round and round the maze, he got lost, too.

They had to wait until one of the old keepers came back from his supper.

They finally got out.

Harris said it was a fine maze, and we agreed to get George to go into it on our way back.

I reminded Harris that we had to get to Shepperton by five o 'clock to meet George.

He suddenly got angry and started saying unpleasant things about George.

Why was George wasting time all day and leaving us to row this heavy boat up and down the river by ourselves to meet him?

Why couldn't he come and do some work?

Why hadn't he got a day off from work and come with us?

What good was he at the bank?

I never see him do any work there, said Harris.

Whenever I go there, I see him sitting behind the glass, trying to look as if he is doing something.

What use is he there?

What's the use of the bank?

They take your money, and when you write a check, they send it back.

What's the use of that?

They did that to me twice last week.

I'm not going to stand that much longer.

I'm going to close my account.

When Harris gets like this, it's always best to let him say what he wants to say.

He pours out everything and is quiet afterwards.

We stopped under the trees at Kempton Park and had lunch.

It is a pretty little spot there.

A pleasant green plateau along the water's edge under the willow trees.

We were eating our bread and jam when a gentleman came and asked us if we knew we were on private land.

We said we hadn't thought about it, but if he told us as a gentleman that we had no right to be there, we would believe him.

He gave us his word and we thanked him, but he did not leave and seemed to be unhappy.

We asked him if there was something we could do for him.

Harris offered him some bread and jam.

He declined it harshly and told us his duty was to remove us from the land.

Harris asked the man what he was going to do.

Harris is strong -looking and well -built and the man measured him up and down.

He said he would go and talk to his master and come back to throw us both into the river.

Of course, he never came back and all he wanted was a shilling.

During the summer, there are quite a few rough guys like him by the riverside, who make an income by blackmailing weak -minded people in this way.

They say the owner of the land has sent them.

The right thing to do is to give them your name and address and wait for the owner to call you to court and prove that you have done damage to his land by sitting down on it.

But most people are shy and lazy, so they prefer to pay what they are asked.

Sometimes it is the owner's fault.

They become more and more selfish every year.

If these men could have their way, they would close up the river Thames altogether.

They actually do close the minor streams that run into the river.

They put chains from one side of the river to the other and put huge signs on the trees.

The side of these signs makes me very mad.

I feel I want to tear each one down and hit the owner on the head with it until he passes out.

I explained my feelings to Harris, and he said he wanted to do worse than that.

He said he would go sing comic songs to them and their whole family and their friends.

I was shocked at this and tried to persuade him not to go that far.

Finally, I succeeded and he promised not to sing comic songs to the relatives and the friends.

You have never heard Harris sing a comic song, so you don't understand how I had helped humankind.

Harris has this fixed idea that he can sing comic songs.

On the contrary, his friends who have heard him have the fixed idea that he can't and never will be able to sing comic songs

and that he should never be allowed to try.

When Harris is at a party and is asked to sing, he replies,

Well, I can only sing a comic song, you know.

He says this in such a way that you think his singing is something you should hear once and die.

Oh, that is nice, says the hostess.

Please sing one, Mr. Harris.

And Harris gets up and walks to the piano with the cheerfulness of a generous person.

Now, silence please everybody, says the hostess turning around.

Mr. Harris is going to sing a comic song.

Oh, how nice, they say, and they come rushing in from the balcony and come up from the stairs

and go fetch one another from all over the house.

They crowd into the room and sit around waiting expectantly.

Then Harris begins, and they are not prepared for this.

Harris never remembers more than the first three lines of the first verse and keeps on repeating these until it is time for the chorus.

He breaks off in the middle of a line and giggles and says, It's very funny.

He can't remember the rest of the song and tries to make it up.

Then suddenly he remembers the lines, but they belong to a different part of the song.

He breaks off again and goes back.

He stops in the middle and starts arguing with the pianist who says he is not singing the right song.

Harris never sees what a fool he is making of himself and how he is annoying a lot of people who never did him any harm.

He honestly thinks people enjoy hearing him and says he will sing another comic song, After Supper.

Speaking of comic songs and parties reminds me of a rather strange experience I had.

We were at a fashionable and highly cultured party.

We had our best clothes on and we talked in a sophisticated way, and we were very happy.

However, among us there were two students that had just returned from Germany.

They were ordinary young men who seemed nervous and uncomfortable.

The truth was we were too clever for them.

They did not understand our refined conversation and our high class tastes.

They were out of place.

They never should have joined us.

Everybody agreed about that later.

We played pieces of music by the old German masters.

We discussed philosophy and ethics.

We were even humorous in a high class way.

Somebody read a French poem after Supper and we said it was beautiful.

Then a lady sang a ballad in Spanish and it made some of us weep.

And then those two young men got up and asked us if we had ever heard Härst -Lossen -Böschen,

who had just arrived downstairs, sing his great German comic song.

None of us had heard it.

The young men said it was the funniest song that had ever been written,

and that if we liked they would get Härst -Lossen -Böschen, whom they knew very well, to sing it.

They said that the song was so funny that when Härst -Lossen -Böschen had sung it to the German emperor,

he had laughed so hard that he had to be carried off to bed.

They said that nobody could sing it like Härst -Lossen -Böschen.

He was so serious all through the song that you thought he was singing a tragedy,

and of course this made the song even funnier.

It was his air of seriousness that made it so amusing.

We said we were very eager to hear it, and we wanted a good laugh.

The two young men went downstairs to get Härst -Lossen -Böschen.

He appeared to be quite pleased, for he came up at once and sat down at the piano.

Oh, it will amuse you, you will laugh, whispered the two young men as they walked towards the piano

and stood behind the professor.

Härst -Lossen -Böschen played the piano himself.

The first part of the song did not seem very funny.

It was sad and strangely frightening, but we whispered to each other that this was the German way.

I don't understand German myself.

I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I left, and have felt much better since.

Still, I did not want people to guess my ignorance.

I had an idea.

I would keep an eye on the two young students and follow them.

When they smiled, I smiled.

When they laughed out loud, I laughed out loud.

I also added a laugh now and then, as if I had seen something funny that the others had not seen.

I considered this especially clever of me.

As the song progressed, I noticed that many other people seemed to have their eyes fixed on the young men as well.

They smiled when the young men smiled, and they laughed out loud when the young men laughed out loud.

The smiling and laughing went extremely well.

However, the German professor did not seem happy.

At first, when we began to laugh, the expression on his face was one of surprise.

We thought this was very funny and said his seriousness was part of the humor.

As we continued to laugh, his surprise turned into annoyance and anger, and he frowned at us all,

except at the two young men whom he could not see because they were behind him.

That caused us to laugh even harder and get spasms of laughter.

We told each other that this song would be the death of us.

The words alone were enough, but his fake seriousness was too much.

He finished in the middle of a storm of laughter.

We said it was the funniest thing we had ever heard in all our lives.

We said how strange it was that there was a popular belief that the Germans did not have a sense of humor.

And we asked the professor why he didn't translate the song into English so that the common people would understand it,

and hear what a real comic song was like.

Then, Hess -Lossen -Boschen got up and lost his temper.

He swore at us in German, and he jumped around and waved his arms and called us all the bad words he knew in English.

He said he had never been so insulted in all his life.

It appeared that the song was not a comic song at all.

It was about a young girl who lived in the Hotz Mountains, and who had given up her life to save her lover's soul.

He died and met her spirit in the air, and then, in the last part of the song, he left her.

I'm not sure about the details, but it was something very sad.

Hess -Lossen -Boschen said that he had sung it to the German emperor who had cried like a child.

Hess -Lossen -Boschen said it was known to be one of the saddest songs in the German language.

It was a very difficult situation for us.

There seemed to be no answer.

We looked around for the two young men who had done this thing,

but they had left the house very quietly, immediately after the song ended.

That was the end of the party.

We never said good night to one another.

We came downstairs one at a time, walking softly.

We asked the servant for our hats and coats in whispers, and opened the door, and slipped out.

I have never been interested in German songs since then.

We reached Walton, a riverside town.

Caesar had a little place in Walton.

Then we passed Outland's Park, a famous old place.

Henry VIII lived there once.

At Wae Bridge, many small streams enter the Thames.

There we saw George.

Montmorrancy barked loudly, eye yelled, and Harris roared.

George waved his hat and yelled back.

George had a strange -looking parcel in his hand.

It was round and flat at one end, with a long straight handle sticking out of it.

What's that? asked Harris.

A frying pan?

No, said George, with a strange, wild look in his eyes.

It's a banjo.

They are very fashionable this season.

Everybody on the river has them.

I didn't know you played the banjo.

Harris and I cried at the same time.

Not exactly, replied George, but they say it's very easy, and I got the instruction book.

Now that George was with us, we made him work.

He did not want to work, of course.

He said he had had a hard time in London.

Harris, who has no sympathy in his nature, said,

and now you are going to have a hard time on the river for a change.

Change is good for everyone.

Go out and tow the boat.

George could not object, but he did say that maybe it would be better for him to stay in the boat

and get the tea ready while Harris and I towed the boat,

because getting the tea ready was a stressful job and Harris and I looked tired.

We did not reply, but handed him the tow line.

He took it and stepped out.

George towed us steadily on to Penton Hook.

There we discussed the important question of camping.

We had decided to sleep on board that night and would either stop there or go on past stains.

The sun was still up, so it seemed early to stop there.

So we decided to go on until runny mead, which is a quiet wooded part of the river,

so that we could find good shelter.

Later, however, we all wished we had stopped at Penton Hook.

Three or four miles upstream is easy to pass through if it is early in the morning,

but at the end of a long day when you were already exhausted, it becomes a terrible task.

You take no interest in the scenery anymore.

You do not chat or laugh.

Every half mile seems like two.

At half past seven, we got to stains at last.

We rode up close to the left bank, looking for a spot to anchor in.

We had intended to go on to Magna Carta Island,

a pretty part of the river with a soft green valley, and to camp in one of the many tiny bays there.

But we did not want to see a pretty view as much as we did earlier that day.

We did not want scenery.

We wanted to have supper and go to bed.

However, we did row up to a very pleasant point called Picnic Point, which was under a great elm tree.

We fastened the boat to its roots.

Then we thought we were going to have supper, but George said no.

We'd better get the canvas up first before it gets dark.

Well, we can see what we're doing, he said.

Then we can sit down and eat with an easy mind.

Putting up that canvas turned out to be a major task, and it looked like such a simple task.

All you needed to do was to take five arches and fit them up over the cover of the boat.

And then you needed to stretch the canvas over the arches and fasten it down.

It would take ten minutes, we thought.

But we soon found out we were wrong.

We took up the arches and began to drop them into the sockets placed for them.

You would not think this would be dangerous work, but, looking back now, I wonder how any of us survived.

They weren't arches, they were evil spirits.

First, they would not fit into the sockets, so we had to jump on them and kick them and hammer them.

And when they were in, we found out they were the wrong ones for those sockets, and we had to take them out.

But they would not come out.

We struggled for five minutes, and then the arches would come out suddenly and try to throw us into the water.

When we were trying with one side of an arch in its place, the other side would come out and hit us on the head.

We got them fixed at last.

All we needed to do now was to get the canvas over them.

George unrolled it and fastened one end over the nose of the boat.

Harris stood in the middle to take it from George and roll it over to me, and I stood by the back to take it.

It took a long time to get to me.

George did his part right, but it was new work to Harris, and he did a bad job of it.

I don't know how he did it, but after ten minutes of superhuman effort, he managed to get himself rolled up in the canvas.

He was so tightly wrapped in it that he could not get out.

He tried desperately to get free, and as he was struggling, I learned this afterwards, he knocked George over.

And then George began to struggle too, and got himself rolled up in the canvas too.

I knew nothing about this at the time.

I had been told to stand where I was and wait for the canvas to come to me.

Montmorrancy and I stood there and waited.

We could see the canvas being violently pulled and thrown around, but we thought this was how it was done, so we did not interfere.

We waited for some time, but things got more difficult.

At last, George's head came out over the side of the boat.

Give us a hand here, can't you, you fat head?

Don't just stand there like a stuffed mummy when you see we are both struggling for air, the head said.

I never could say no to a call for help, so I went and unfastened them.

After that, it took us half an hour's work before the canvas was up.

We cleared everything out of the way and prepared supper.

We put the kettle onto boil up in the nose of the boat and went down to the back and ignored it.

This is the only way to get a kettle to boil.

If it sees you are anxiously waiting for it, it will never boil.

You have to go away and begin your meal as if you are not going to have any tea at all.

You must not even look at it.

It is also a good idea to talk to each other very loudly about how you don't need any tea.

You get near the kettle so that it can hear you, and you shout out,

I don't want any tea, do you, George?

And George shouts back, oh no, I don't like tea, we'll have lemonade instead.

Hearing this, the kettle boils.

We used this tactic, and by the time supper was ready, the tea was waiting.

Then we let the lantern and sat down to supper.

We wanted that supper.

For thirty -five minutes, not a sound was heard on the boat,

except for the sound of the knives and forks and the grinding of our teeth.

How good one feels when one is full, how satisfied with oneself and with the world.

People say a clear conscience makes you very happy, but a full stomach achieves this as well,

and it is cheaper and more easily obtained.

One feels so forgiving, generous, and kind -hearted after a good meal.

Before our supper, Harris and I were quarrelsome and bad -tempered.

After our supper, we sat and smiled at one another, and we smiled at the dog, too.

We loved each other. We loved everybody.

As he was moving around, Harris accidentally stepped on George's foot.

If it had happened before supper, George would have used some very bad language

to express his wishes for Harris.

But now, he said, steady old fellow.

And Harris did not say that it was hard not to step on George's feet because of their size

or advise him to hang them over the side of the boat.

Instead, he said, oh, I'm so sorry, old chap.

I hope I haven't hurt you.

And George said, not at all. It was my fault.

And Harris said, no, no, it was my fault.

It was quite nice to hear them talking like this.

We lit our pipes and sat, looking out on the quiet night, and talked.

We went to bed at ten that night, and I thought I would sleep well because I was so tired.

But I didn't.

I did get to sleep for a few hours, and then some part of the boat which seemed to have grown up in the night

kept pushing into my spine.

I slept through it for some time, dreaming that I had swallowed a gold coin,

and they were cutting a hole in my back to get it out.

I told them I would pay them back at the end of the month, but they wouldn't listen.

They continued cutting my back, and I woke up.

The boat seemed airless, and I had a headache.

I thought I would step out into the cool night air.

I put on whatever clothes I could find, some of my own, and some of Georges and Harris's.

I went out onto the bank.

It was a beautiful night.

The moon had sunk, and all you could see were the stars.

The night is full of comfort and strength.

Our small sorrows disappear.

The day is full of worry and trouble, and our hearts are full of evil and unpleasant thoughts,

and the world seems hard and wrong to us.

But then night, like some great loving mother, makes the pain go away.