"DUE SOUTH!"
Note.—When I am travelling due South, as I am now, per L. & S. W. R., to join my party, all I require may be summed up in the accompanying "Mem.," which is to this effect:—
Mem.—Give me a Pullman car, my favourite beverage, a good cigar, or an old pipe charged with well-conditioned bird's-eye, an amiable companion possessed of sufficient ready money in small change, give me likewise a pack of playing cards, let the gods grant me more than average luck at écarté or spoof, and never can I regret the two hours and forty minutes occupied by the journey from "W't'r'o" to "P'm'th."
To start with, the line to Pinemouth is one of those "lines" that have "fallen," in the pleasantest of "pleasant places." On a broiling summer's day you pass through a wide expanse of landscape, refreshingly painted in Nature's brightest water colours—plenty of colour, plenty of water. All over the sandy plains of Aldershot, boxes of toy soldiers, with white toy tents and the smartest little flags, have been emptied out; and everywhere about the tiny figures may be seen marching, lounging, digging, riding, firing, surveying, performing evolutions to the sound of the warlike trumpet, and generally employed in a sort of undressed rehearsal of such martial business as is incidental to a Great Campaign Drama. Then, lest the spirits of the travelling tourist should rise so high that he might run the chance of "getting a bit above hisself," as horse-dealers graphically express it, he is whirled away from the war-like scene, and is taken through the peaceful grounds of Wokingham. Here to the unwonted military ardour so recently aroused in the bosom of the travelling civilian will be administered a succession of dampers in the shape of attractively-placed and most legibly printed reminders to the effect that "eligible plots" for burial are "still to be let," and that the terms for intending residents in the thriving country town of Necropolis can be obtained on application to Messrs. Somebody and Sons at Suchandsucher Place, London; the tone of these notices suggesting, in a generally festive spirit, that the good old maxim "first come first served" will be strictly observed in all matters of Necropolitan business.
Then we come to fair Southampton Water, with its marine kind of flymen waiting to take you to the boats, and the boats waiting to take you from the flymen to the yachts. On we speed through the New Forest, where those historically inclined remember William Rufus, and others, with a modern political bias, think of William Harcourt; while the grateful novel-devourer remembers that away in the forest resides the authoress of Lady Audley's Secret, and many other plots. Here, within ten minutes of our appointed time, is Terminus Number One, East Pinemouth, and, finally, West Pinemouth, which, speaking for myself individually and collectively, I prefer to East Pinemouth; at all events, at this particular time of year. Moreover, it appears that a rapidly increasing number are of my opinion, seeing how house-building, and very good house-building, too, is extending westward, and, alas and alack-a-day, threatening immediate destruction to heather, pine, fir, and forest generally. I sing:—
"How happy could I be with heather
If builder were only away!"
No sooner is a house (most of them excellently-planned houses) set up, with garden and lovely view of sea, than down in front of him squats another squatter, up goes another house, the situation is robbed of the charm of privacy, and unless the owner of the first house sits on his own roof or has a special tower built, which erection would probably involve him in difficulties with his neighbours, his view of the sea is reduced to a mere peep, and in course of time will, it is probable, be altogether blocked out. However, as Boys will be Boys, so Builders will be Builders.
One of the chief advantages offered by Pinemouth as a place where a summer holiday may be happily spent, is the facility afforded for getting away from it, in every possible direction; by sea, river, rail, and road. À propos of "road," the fly-drivers, shopkeepers, and livery-stable keepers of P'm'th, are, for the most part, like the fly-drivers, livery-stablers, and shopkeepers at any place which boasts a recognised season. The eccentric visitor, who chooses to come out of the regulation time, must take his chance, and be content with out-of-season manners to suit his out-of-season custom; still, in the words of the immortal bard, "They're all right when you know 'em, but you've got to know 'em fust!"
As to the hiring of flys and midgets, there is a board of rules and regulations stuck up in the railway station and elsewhere, the interpretation whereof may possibly be mastered by those able and willing to devote a few days to the study of its dark sayings.
"What's the meaning of this rule?" I inadvertently ask a ruddy-faced policeman, on whose broad shoulders time unoccupied seems to be weighing somewhat heavily, at the same time pointing to one of the regulations on the board in question.
"Well, Sir," replies the civil constable, in a carefully measured tone, "it is this way"—and then he commences.
* * * * * *
I breathe again; it is half an hour since I addressed that ruddy-faced official, from whom, thank goodness, I have at last contrived to escape. He has kept me there, giving me, as it were, a lecture on the black board, telling me what this rule might mean if it were read one way, and what that rule might mean if it were read another way, and what both rules might mean if they were each of them read in totally different ways; and how one was labelled "a" (which I saw for myself), and how another was distinguished by being lettered "b"; and how he (my constabulary instructor) "wasn't quite sure himself whether his reading of 'em was quite right;" then going over all the paragraphs again in detail, indicating each syllable with his finger, as though he were teaching an infant spelling-class, and finally coming to the conclusion whereat Bottom the Weaver arrived when he surmised that it was all "past the wit of man to understand," and advising me that, on the whole, if any particular case of attempted extortion should happen to arise, I should do well not to appeal to these rules and regulations, but to summon the extortionist before the nearest police magistrate. "But," said he, as if struck by a new light, "it may be that this rule 'a'"——And here he faced round, in order more closely to inspect the mysterious cryptogram. Taking advantage of his eye being off me for one second, which it had never once been during the previous thirty minutes, I stepped as lightly and rapidly away as my thirteen stone will permit, and fled. I fancied I heard him calling after me that he had discovered something or other; but not even if he had shouted "Stop thief!" should I have paused in my Mazeppa-like career. "Once aboard the lugger," I exclaim to myself, quoting the melodramatic pirate, "and I am free!" So saying, I entered the hospitable gates of my present tenancy, and sank exhausted on the sofa.
Mem.—Never again ask a policeman to explain strange cab-rules and regulations.