In a little while the canal, coming to its last lock,
began to discharge its water-houses on the Oise; so
that we had no lack of company to fear. Here
were all our old friends; the Deo Gratias of Conde
and the Four Sons of Aymon journeyed cheerily down
stream along with us; we exchanged waterside pleasantries
with the steersman perched among the lumber, or the
driver hoarse with bawling to his horses; and the
children came and looked over the side as we paddled
by. We had never known all this while how much
we missed them; but it gave us a fillip to see the
smoke from their chimneys.
A little below this junction we made another meeting
of yet more account. For there we were joined
by the Aisne, already a far-travelled river and fresh
out of Champagne. Here ended the adolescence
of the Oise; this was his marriage day; thenceforward
he had a stately, brimming march, conscious of his
own dignity and sundry dams. He became a tranquil
feature in the scene. The trees and towns saw
themselves in him, as in a mirror. He carried
the canoes lightly on his broad breast; there was
no need to work hard against an eddy: but idleness
became the order of the day, and mere straightforward
dipping of the paddle, now on this side, now on that,
without intelligence or effort. Truly we were
coming into halcyon weather upon all accounts, and
were floated towards the sea like gentlemen.
We made Compiegne as the sun was going down:
a fine profile of a town above the river. Over
the bridge, a regiment was parading to the drum.
People loitered on the quay, some fishing, some looking
idly at the stream. And as the two boats shot
in along the water, we could see them pointing them
out and speaking one to another. We landed at
a floating lavatory, where the washerwomen were still
beating the clothes.
AT COMPIEGNE
We put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compiegne, where
nobody observed our presence.
Reservery and general militarismus (as the Germans
call it) were rampant. A camp of conical white
tents without the town looked like a leaf out of a
picture Bible; sword-belts decorated the walls of
the cafes; and the streets kept sounding all day long
with military music. It was not possible to
be an Englishman and avoid a feeling of elation; for
the men who followed the drums were small, and walked
shabbily. Each man inclined at his own angle,
and jolted to his own convenience, as he went.
There was nothing of the superb gait with which a
regiment of tall Highlanders moves behind its music,
solemn and inevitable, like a natural phenomenon.
Who that has seen it can forget the drum-major pacing
in front, the drummers’ tiger-skins, the pipers’
swinging plaids, the strange elastic rhythm of the
whole regiment footing it in time—and the
bang of the drum, when the brasses cease, and the shrill
pipes take up the martial story in their place?
