  Oh, what a Fall! Second Day There was a little more stir in the place the next morning, but it was because it was filled with tramps, who were wisely taking advantage of the early coolness and hurrying on their way. But when we turned off the High Street the town was as still in the glare of day as it had been in the late twilight. The high brick walls of the private gardens might have enclosed dwelling-places of the dead rather than of the living, for not a sound came over them. The little pointed houses might have been sepulchres for all the signs of life they gave. The whole town, instead of one little street, should be called Tranquil Place. It seemed very characteristic that the Cathedral should be closed, and this at the season when the tourist is abroad in the land. It was being cleaned, an old man told us. We looked through the iron railing of the door into the nave, and at the marble floor, and the tall, white, rounded arches. ‘It’s like looking down the throat of Old Time!’ Mr. Grewgious thought when he After we had looked at the ‘Bull,’ which still reminds the public by a sign of the good beds enjoyed by Mr. Pickwick and his friends, at the Town Hall where Pip was apprenticed, at the many-gabled, lattice-windowed house in which Rosa Bud bloomed into young ladyhood, and were standing in front of the ‘Six Poor Travellers’’ lodging-place, reading the inscription over the door, and wondering who were the proctors classed with rogues who could not rest within, a benevolent Englishman passing that way fell upon us. He was a worthy fellow-citizen of Richard Watts. Seeing we were strangers, he, without waiting to be asked, bestowed upon us the charity of information. ‘Do you know what a Proctor is, Sir?’ he asked, addressing himself to J., who meekly, as befits one receiving alms, said that he did not. ‘No! Well, then, I will tell you. It is a proc-u-ra-tor,—one who collects Peter’s pence for the Pope, Sir. Richard Watts lived in the sixteenth century, when Protestantism made people feel bitterly, Sir, and he would He had disappeared around the curve of the street before we had finished thanking him. As the information was new to us, I, with the common belief that others must be as ignorant as myself, now imitate his benevolence, and here bestow it in alms upon whoever may be in need of it. It was one o’clock when we mounted our tricycle and set out once more for Canterbury. The sky was still unclouded and the day warm, but a good breeze was blowing, and we were fresh for our ride. The streets of Chatham were as busy as those of Rochester were idle, and blocked with waggons, so that we had to fall in line and go at snail’s pace. Once, with a sudden halt, we were brought so near a horse just in front, that my foot knocked against his leg; but he bore the blow stoically, as if he were used to Chatham streets. An American circus was about to start out on its grand street parade, and children hung about corners and out of windows. At the foot of the hill outside the town, and marked ‘Dangerous’ by the National Cyclists’ Union, for the benefit of cyclers, two very small boys offered to ‘Push it up, Sir!’ but as it looked as if it would push them down, we declined. At the top we met a cycler on his way from Canterbury, and The Marshes. But at first we found it fair enough. From Chatham to Sittingbourne our journey was one of unmixed pleasure. The wheels went easily, and the wind blew on our backs. Now we passed on our right a vast treeless expanse, divided into squares of green, and golden, and brown, all shining softly in the sunlight, with here and there a windmill; but to the left we could see far below us the white line of the river A Cherry Orchard. We met few people. The tramps who come down to Kent for the hop-picking turn off from Rochester to go to Maidstone, where the largest hop-fields are, and where there is more chance for them to be hired; but a comparatively small number go on to Canterbury. It was, then, in a happy frame of mind, that we reached the inn at Sittingbourne. It was an unassuming place, but quiet and clean; the bar was on one side of the hall, the coffee-room on the other. The latter was empty, and the landlady, after laying the cloth for our bread and cheese and shandy-gaff—of all drinks the most refreshing to the cycler—left us alone to study this printed notice, which hung in a frame over the door:— ‘Call frequently, We soon had the opportunity of putting into practice one clause of this advice, for the door was suddenly burst open, and a short man with a bald head, who wore the Cyclists’ Touring Club uniform, rushed in. We said we were. ‘I don’t like tandems, do you?’ he continued, fiercely, as if he were daring us to differ from him. He seemed to think we had come there that he might tell us his grievances; which he did, with much elaboration, while we ate our lunch. He and his wife had been down to Margate from London, and were now on their way back, he said. They had made the trip on a tandem; it was the first time he had ridden one, and it would be the last, for he didn’t like tandems—they were horrid things! Did we like tandems? To avoid repetition, I may here mention that this expression of dislike, together with the query as to our opinion, was the refrain to everything he said. It was always given with the same interest and emphasis as if it were an entirely original remark. The only variation he made was by sometimes beginning with the statement, and at others with the question. He explained the reasons for his dislike. The principal was, that the people one met on the roads always insulted riders on a tandem. Why, he had been off his machine a dozen times that morning, fighting men who had been chaffing him! I thought, with a shudder, of the crowd of hucksters The talk now turning upon America, we told him, in answer to his inquiries, that we were Americans. ‘From Canada?’ his wife asked. ‘Oh, no!’ I answered; ‘from Philadelphia.’ ‘Yes,’ J. admitted, modestly. ‘But then, you know, English is sometimes spoken in our part of the world!’ All this made the fierce little cycler very friendly, and he next wanted to know where we were going. ‘To Canterbury,’ we said. ‘To Canterbury!’ he cried; and then, to give greater force to his words, he came and stood directly in front of us on the other side of the table. ‘To Canterbury! Well, then, my advice to you is, if you have no other object than pleasure, don’t go! No, don’t you go! I’ve been there, and I know what I say. It’s a rotten place. There’s nothing in it but an old cathedral and a lot of old houses and churches, and they charged me sixpence for keeping my tandem one night. I don’t like tandems-horrid things! Do you like tandems? Yes, it’s a rotten place, and if I had my way I’d raze it to the ground!’ I now understand why it is that Mr. Matthew Arnold thinks the average Briton so very terrible. By this time we had finished our lunch, and were ready to start. The watchmaker and his wife had engaged in another battle. She did not agree with him in his opinion A Farmhouse near Rochester. But their wishes were the only good luck we met with. We had not gone far from Sittingbourne, when we admitted that the pilgrim we had met just outside of Chatham was no false prophet after all; for the road now began to be heavy with sand and rough with flints. And oh, the hills! They were not very steep, but I was a novice in cycling. No sooner were we on up-grades than I exhausted myself by my vigorous back-pedalling. I have heard the uninitiated say that tricycling must be so easy, just like working the velocipedes of our childhood. The worst of it was, that as the road here wound little, we could see it miles ahead—a white perpendicular line on the Finally, we came to Boughton, a small village with ivy-grown houses and a squirrel and a dolphin staring at each other amicably from rival inns. It is right at the foot of Boughton Hill. Now that we were near it, the white line we had seen for so long widened into a broad road, but it ‘gan atake There is no record that mine host and the Chanones Yeman dismounted and walked to rest their horses. But all the many waggons and carriages and cycles we saw above us on the modern road were being led, not driven. Halfway up was an old lumbering stage, with boxes piled on the top, and big baskets and bundles swinging underneath. The driver was walking; but a tramp, who had made believe to push when on level ground, now sat comfortably on the backseat, taking his ease. A little lower was the friendly driver with his empty carriage, for he had rested at the ‘Squirrel,’ and so we had caught up to him again. At the top we looked back to see that the West was a broad sea of shining light. A yellow mist hung over the plain, softening and blending its many colours. Far off to the north the river glittered and sparkled, and a warm glow spread over the green of the near hillsides. The way in front of us was grey and colourless by comparison. It was almost all down-hill after this. Did I want to be driven into Canterbury, indeed? My benevolent ‘Wete ye not wher stondeth a litel toun, It is better known now as Harbledown. A little of our trouble here came back, for the road leading to that part of it ‘ycleped Bob-up,’ was steep and heavy, and we had to walk. To our right were the old red-brick almshouses and the little church of St. Michael, one of the many oldest churches in Kent, and of which all we could see was the ivy-covered tower. It was here that Henry, when on his way to the holy shrine, dismounted, that, as became his humble calling of pilgrim, he might walk into Canterbury. And it was here, too, that the Person began his long-winded discourse. But we, less reverent than King Henry, now mounted again; and, less phlegmatic than the Person, we held our peace. For as we rode further up we heard far-away chimes, just as Erasmus did when he went from Harbledown; and there gradually rose A little further on we passed a hop-field, where the picking had already begun. In one part the poles were stripped of their vines, so that it looked as if the farmer had reaped for Westgate from without. Larger Image We ‘toke’ our inn at the sign of the ‘Falstaff,’ without the gate. Honest Jack, in buff doublet and red hose, hanging between the projecting windows and far out over the pavement by a wonderful piece of wrought-iron work, gave us welcome, and within we found rest and good cheer for weary pilgrims. Then we ‘ordeyned’ our dinner wisely, but it was too late to go to the Cathedral that same evening, as we should have liked to have done, and we were forced to wait for the morrow. After we had come downstairs from our dimity-curtained bed-chamber, had dined, and were sitting over our tea in a little, low-ceilinged room, from whose window we looked into a pretty garden of roses and grapevines, a stranger sent us greeting, and asked if he might come and sit with us. He was a priest, also making pilgrimage, who had ridden from Rochester on a machine like ours; so that we became friendly forthwith, and, like the pilgrims who ‘in his wyse made hertly chere, And just before we parted for the night we held counsel together and agreed that, in the morning, we would in company visit the holy shrine. |
|
