THE VILLAGE STREET, MOY
"Moy was a pleasant little village."—R. L. S.
The landlord of the hotel assured me that he remembered the visit of my heroes, even mentioning the hour of their arrival and departure. He was a young man then; but to-day his hair is streaked with grey. The Juge de Paix, who entertained the travellers, is still to the fore: a bachelor then, he is a widower now.
I noticed an odd feature of the hotel: its meat safe was the roof of the passage to the courtyard. Here, hanging from hooks fixed in the roof, were joints of beef, legs of mutton, hares, rabbits, and so forth—an abundant display; and when the cook was in need of an item, she came out with a long pole and reached down the piece she wanted.
XII.
The canoeists left Landrecies on a rainy morning, the judge under an umbrella seeing them off. My lot was pleasanter, for the morning was fine and the landlord's son, a bright lad, with those babyish socks which French boys wear, escorted me some way out of the town on his bicycle, chatting merrily about the state of the roads, and evincing great surprise when he heard that we would be fined for cycling on the footpath in England.
My route lay along the highway to Guise for a time and close to the canal, passing through a gentle undulating country with far views of thickly-wooded fields and little hills. The hamlets by the way were surrounded by hop fields, the great poles with their fantastic coverings of the vine being the most noticeable feature of the wayside, just as R. L. S. had observed them when the hop-growers of to-day were bien jeune, as the old gentleman at the play in Paris described Stevenson himself. Etreux, where the canal journey ended, I found a thriving and agreeable little town, the rattle of the loom being heard from many an open door, and the thud, thud of flails in the farm-steadings on the outskirts. At Etreux the canoes were placed on a light country cart one morning, and the travellers walked to Vadencourt by way of Tupigny, a village where I was served with a make-shift lunch at a little inn, the landlady doing the cooking and laying the table with a baby held in her left arm! Vadencourt is full of weavers, and here close by the old bridge over the river the Arethusa and Cigarette were launched in the fast-flowing water of the River Oise.
XIII.
The canoeists were now in the full swing of perhaps the most enjoyable part of their journey. Let a canal be never so beautiful, it is still a canal, and no adventure need be looked for there; but a river that runs wild and free is a possible highway to the enchanted kingdom of Romance. We have the avowal of R. L. S. that on this sedgy stream, wriggling its devious ways by field and woodland, he had some of the happiest moments of his life.
"We could have shouted aloud," he says in a glowing passage. "If this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a thing of death's contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself with us. I was living three to the minute. I was scoring points against him every stroke of my paddle, every turn of the stream. I have rarely had better profit of my life. For I think we may look upon our little private war with death somewhat in this light. If a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves. And above all, where, instead of simply spending, he makes a profitable investment for some of his money, when it will be out of risk of loss. So every bit of brisk living, and above all when it is healthful, is just so much gained upon the wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the less in our pockets, the more in our stomach, when he cries, 'Stand and deliver.' A swift stream is a favourite artifice of his, and one that brings him in a comfortable thing per annum; but when he and I come to settle our accounts, I shall whistle in his face for these hours upon the upper Oise."