personally in the fray. And still I held to
my paddle. At last I dragged myself on to my
stomach on the trunk, and lay there a breathless sop,
with a mingled sense of humour and injustice.
A poor figure I must have presented to Burns upon
the hill-top with his team. But there was the
paddle in my hand. On my tomb, if ever I have
one, I mean to get these words inscribed: ‘He
clung to his paddle.’
The Cigarette had gone past a while before; for, as
I might have observed, if I had been a little less
pleased with the universe at the moment, there was
a clear way round the tree-top at the farther side.
He had offered his services to haul me out, but as
I was then already on my elbows, I had declined, and
sent him down stream after the truant Arethusa.
The stream was too rapid for a man to mount with
one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands. So
I crawled along the trunk to shore, and proceeded
down the meadows by the river-side. I was so
cold that my heart was sore. I had now an idea
of my own why the reeds so bitterly shivered.
I could have given any of them a lesson. The
Cigarette remarked facetiously that he thought I was
‘taking exercise’ as I drew near, until
he made out for certain that I was only twittering
with cold. I had a rub down with a towel, and
donned a dry suit from the india-rubber bag.
But I was not my own man again for the rest of the
voyage. I had a queasy sense that I wore my
last dry clothes upon my body. The struggle had
tired me; and perhaps, whether I knew it or not, I
was a little dashed in spirit. The devouring
element in the universe had leaped out against me,
in this green valley quickened by a running stream.
The bells were all very pretty in their way, but
I had heard some of the hollow notes of Pan’s
music. Would the wicked river drag me down by
the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the time?
Nature’s good-humour was only skin-deep after
all.
There was still a long way to go by the winding course
of the stream, and darkness had fallen, and a late
bell was ringing in Origny Sainte-Benoite, when we
arrived.
ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE
A BY-DAY
The next day was Sunday, and the church bells had
little rest; indeed, I do not think I remember anywhere
else so great a choice of services as were here offered
to the devout. And while the bells made merry
in the sunshine, all the world with his dog was out
shooting among the beets and colza.
In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the
street at a foot-pace, singing to a very slow, lamentable
music ’O France, mes amours.’ It
brought everybody to the door; and when our landlady
called in the man to buy the words, he had not a copy
of them left. She was not the first nor the second
who had been taken with the song. There is something
very pathetic in the love of the French people, since
the war, for dismal patriotic music-making. I
