<h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
<p class="gutsumm">Reading.—We are towed by steam
launch.—Irritating behaviour of small boats.—How they
get in the way of steam launches.—George and Harris again
shirk their work.—Rather a hackneyed story.—Streatley
and Goring.</p>
<p>We came in sight of Reading about eleven. The river is
dirty and dismal here. One does not linger in the
neighbourhood of Reading. The town itself is a famous old
place, dating from the dim days of King Ethelred, when the Danes
anchored their warships in the Kennet, and started from Reading
to ravage all the land of Wessex; and here Ethelred and his
brother Alfred fought and defeated them, Ethelred doing the
praying and Alfred the fighting.</p>
<p>In later years, Reading seems to have been regarded as a handy
place to run down to, when matters were becoming unpleasant in
London. Parliament generally rushed off to Reading whenever
there was a plague on at Westminster; and, in 1625, the Law
followed suit, and all the courts were held at Reading. It
must have been worth while having a mere ordinary plague now and
then in London to get rid of both the lawyers and the
Parliament.</p>
<p>During the Parliamentary struggle, Reading was besieged by the
Earl of Essex, and, a quarter of a century later, the Prince of
Orange routed King James’s troops there.</p>
<p>Henry I. lies buried at Reading, in the Benedictine abbey
founded by him there, the ruins of which may still be seen; and,
in this same abbey, great John of Gaunt was married to the Lady
Blanche.</p>
<p>At Reading lock we came up with a steam launch, belonging to
some friends of mine, and they towed us up to within about a mile
of Streatley. It is very delightful being towed up by a
launch. I prefer it myself to rowing. The run would
have been more delightful still, if it had not been for a lot of
wretched small boats that were continually getting in the way of
our launch, and, to avoid running down which, we had to be
continually easing and stopping. It is really most
annoying, the manner in which these rowing boats get in the way
of one’s launch up the river; something ought to done to
stop it.</p>
<p>And they are so confoundedly impertinent, too, over it.
You can whistle till you nearly burst your boiler before they
will trouble themselves to hurry. I would have one or two
of them run down now and then, if I had my way, just to teach
them all a lesson.</p>
<p>The river becomes very lovely from a little above
Reading. The railway rather spoils it near Tilehurst, but
from Mapledurham up to Streatley it is glorious. A little
above Mapledurham lock you pass Hardwick House, where Charles I.
played bowls. The neighbourhood of Pangbourne, where the
quaint little Swan Inn stands, must be as familiar to the
<i>habitues</i> of the Art Exhibitions as it is to its own
inhabitants.</p>
<p>My friends’ launch cast us loose just below the grotto,
and then Harris wanted to make out that it was my turn to
pull. This seemed to me most unreasonable. It had
been arranged in the morning that I should bring the boat up to
three miles above Reading. Well, here we were, ten miles
above Reading! Surely it was now their turn again.</p>
<p>I could not get either George or Harris to see the matter in
its proper light, however; so, to save argument, I took the
sculls. I had not been pulling for more than a minute or
so, when George noticed something black floating on the water,
and we drew up to it. George leant over, as we neared it,
and laid hold of it. And then he drew back with a cry, and
a blanched face.</p>
<p>It was the dead body of a woman. It lay very lightly on
the water, and the face was sweet and calm. It was not a
beautiful face; it was too prematurely aged-looking, too thin and
drawn, to be that; but it was a gentle, lovable face, in spite of
its stamp of pinch and poverty, and upon it was that look of
restful peace that comes to the faces of the sick sometimes when
at last the pain has left them.</p>
<p>Fortunately for us—we having no desire to be kept
hanging about coroners’ courts—some men on the bank
had seen the body too, and now took charge of it from us.</p>
<p>We found out the woman’s story afterwards. Of
course it was the old, old vulgar tragedy. She had loved
and been deceived—or had deceived herself. Anyhow,
she had sinned—some of us do now and then—and her
family and friends, naturally shocked and indignant, had closed
their doors against her.</p>
<p>Left to fight the world alone, with the millstone of her shame
around her neck, she had sunk ever lower and lower. For a
while she had kept both herself and the child on the twelve
shillings a week that twelve hours’ drudgery a day procured
her, paying six shillings out of it for the child, and keeping
her own body and soul together on the remainder.</p>
<p>Six shillings a week does not keep body and soul together very
unitedly. They want to get away from each other when there
is only such a very slight bond as that between them; and one
day, I suppose, the pain and the dull monotony of it all had
stood before her eyes plainer than usual, and the mocking spectre
had frightened her. She had made one last appeal to
friends, but, against the chill wall of their respectability, the
voice of the erring outcast fell unheeded; and then she had gone
to see her child—had held it in her arms and kissed it, in
a weary, dull sort of way, and without betraying any particular
emotion of any kind, and had left it, after putting into its hand
a penny box of chocolate she had bought it, and afterwards, with
her last few shillings, had taken a ticket and come down to
Goring.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<SPAN href="images/p270b.jpg">
<ANTIMG alt= "Woman in the water" title= "Woman in the water" src="images/p270s.jpg" /></SPAN></p>
<p>It seemed that the bitterest thoughts of her life must have
centred about the wooded reaches and the bright green meadows
around Goring; but women strangely hug the knife that stabs them,
and, perhaps, amidst the gall, there may have mingled also sunny
memories of sweetest hours, spent upon those shadowed deeps over
which the great trees bend their branches down so low.</p>
<p>She had wandered about the woods by the river’s brink
all day, and then, when evening fell and the grey twilight spread
its dusky robe upon the waters, she stretched her arms out to the
silent river that had known her sorrow and her joy. And the
old river had taken her into its gentle arms, and had laid her
weary head upon its bosom, and had hushed away the pain.</p>
<p>Thus had she sinned in all things—sinned in living and
in dying. God help her! and all other sinners, if any more
there be.</p>
<p>Goring on the left bank and Streatley on the right are both or
either charming places to stay at for a few days. The
reaches down to Pangbourne woo one for a sunny sail or for a
moonlight row, and the country round about is full of
beauty. We had intended to push on to Wallingford that day,
but the sweet smiling face of the river here lured us to linger
for a while; and so we left our boat at the bridge, and went up
into Streatley, and lunched at the “Bull,” much to
Montmorency’s satisfaction.</p>
<p>They say that the hills on each ride of the stream here once
joined and formed a barrier across what is now the Thames, and
that then the river ended there above Goring in one vast
lake. I am not in a position either to contradict or affirm
this statement. I simply offer it.</p>
<p>It is an ancient place, Streatley, dating back, like most
river-side towns and villages, to British and Saxon times.
Goring is not nearly so pretty a little spot to stop at as
Streatley, if you have your choice; but it is passing fair enough
in its way, and is nearer the railway in case you want to slip
off without paying your hotel bill.</p>
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