The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer"; or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan. Gordon Stables

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      We passed through the town itself, which is nice enough, and near the bridge drew to the side and stopped, I walking on and over the bridge to find a place to stand for a few hours, for Matilda was tired and steaming, and we all looked forward to dinner.

      The river looks nowhere more lovely and picturesque than it does at Maidenhead in summer. Those who cross it by train know this, but you have to stand on the old bridge itself and look at it before you can realise all its beauty. The Thames here is so broad and peaceful, it seems loth to leave so sweet a place. Then the pretty house-boats and yachts, with awnings spread, and smart boats laden with pleasure-seekers, and the broad green lawns on the banks, with their tents and arbours and bright-coloured flower vases, give this reach of the Thames quite a character of its own. How trim these lawns are to be sure! almost too much so for my ideas of romance; and then the chairs need not be stuck all in a row, nor need the vases be so very gaudy.

      I found a place to suit me at last, and the Wanderer was drawn up on an inn causeway. Matilda was led away to the stable, the after-steps were let down, and the children said, “Isn’t it dinner-time, pa?”

      Pa thought it was. The cloth was spread on this soft carpet, and round it we all squatted—Hurricane Bob in the immediate rear—and had our first real gipsy feed, washed down with ginger-ale procured from the adjoining inn.

      I wondered if the Wanderer really was an object of curiosity to the groups who gathered and walked and talked around us?

      Younger ladies, I know, were delighted, and not slow to say so.

      But I do not think that any one took us for hawkers or cheap-Jack people.

      “If I had that caravan, now, and a thousand a year,” we heard one man observe, “I’d kick about everywhere all over the country, and I wouldn’t call the king my cousin.”

      Soon after we had returned from a walk and a look at the shops a couple of caravans with real gipsies crossed the bridge.

      “Stop, Bill, stop!” cried one of the tawny women, who had a bundle of mats for a chest protector. “Stop the ’orses, can’t yer? I wouldn’t miss a sight o’ this for a pension o’ ’taters.”

      The horses were stopped. Sorry-looking nags they were, with coffin heads, bony rumps, and sadly swollen legs.

      “Well I never!”

      “Sure there was never sich a wan as that afore on the road!”

      “Why, look at her, Sally! Look at her, Jim! Up and down, and roun’ and roun’, and back and fore. Why, Bill! I say, that wan’s as complete as a marriage certificate or a summons for assault.”

      We people inside felt the compliment.

      But we did not show.

      “Hi, missus!” cried one; “are ye in, missus? Surely a wan like that wouldn’t be athout a missus. Will ye buy a basket, missus? Show your cap and your bonny face, missus. Would ye no obleege us with just one blink at ye?”

      They went away at last, and soon after we got Matilda in and followed.

      With her head towards home, and hard, level road, Matilda trotted now, and laughed louder than ever.

      But soon the road began to rise; we had to climb the long, steep Maidenhead hill.

      And just then the storm of rain and hail broke right in our teeth. At the middle of the hill it was at its worst, but the mare strode boldly on, and finally we were on fairly level road and drew up under some lime-trees.

      The distance from Twyford to Maidenhead is nine miles, so we took it as easy going: as we had done coming.

      We had meant to have tea in the thicket, but I found at the last moment I had forgotten the water. There was nothing for it but to “bide a wee.”

      We stopped for half-an-hour in the thicket, nevertheless, to admire the scenery. Another storm was coming up, but as yet the sun shone brightly on the woods beyond the upland, and the effect was very beautiful. The tree masses were of every colour—green elms and limes, yellowed-leaved oaks, dark waving Scottish pines, and black and elfin-looking yews, with here and there a copper beech.

      But the storm came on apace. The last ray of sunlight struck athwart a lime, making its branches look startlingly green against the dark purple of the thundercloud.

      Then a darting, almost blinding flash, and by-and-bye the peal of thunder.

      The storm came nearer and nearer, so that soon the thunder-claps followed the flashes almost instantly.

      Not until the rain and hail came on did the blackbirds cease to flute or the swallows to skim high overhead. How does this accord with the poet Thomson’s description of the behaviour of animals during a summer thunderstorm, or rather the boding silence that precedes it?—

       “Prone to the lowest vale the aerial tribes

       Descend. The tempest-loving raven scarce

       Dares wing the dubious dusk. In rueful gaze

       The cattle stand,” etc.

      Our birds and beasts in Berkshire are not nearly so frightened at thunder as those in Thomson’s time must have been, but then there were no railway trains in Thomson’s time!

      The poet speaks of unusual darkness brooding in the sky before the thunder raises his tremendous voice. This is so; I have known it so dark, or dusk rather, that the birds flew to roost and bats came out. But it is not always that “a calm” or “boding silence reigns.” Sometimes the wind sweeps here and there in uncertain gusts before the storm, the leaf-laden branches bending hither and thither before them.

      We came to a part of the road at last where the gable end of a pretty porter’s lodge peeped over the trees, and here pulled up. The thunder was very loud, and lightning incessant, only it did not rain then. Nothing deterred, Lovat, kettle in hand, lowered himself from the coupé and disappeared to beg for water. As there was no other house near at hand it was natural for the good woman of the lodge, seeing a little boy with a fisherman’s red cap on, standing at her porch begging for water, to ask,—“Wherever do you come from?” Lovat pointed upwards in the direction of the caravan, which was hidden from view by the trees, and said,—

      “From up there.”

      “Do ye mean to tell me,” she said, “that you dropped out of the clouds in a thunderstorm with a tin-kettle in your hand?”

      But he got the water, the good lady had her joke, and we had tea.

      The storm grew worse after this. Inez grew frightened, and asked me to play.

      “Do play the fiddle, pa!” she beseeched. So, while the “Lightning gleamed across the rift,” and the thunder crashed overhead, “pa” fiddled, even as Nero fiddled when Rome was burning.

Chapter Four.

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