The river ran through the wood for about a mile; but as it is a law of English nature that no stream shall have the charm of woodland on both sides at once, the northern bank was a bit of meadowland, round which ran, at some distance, a belt of trees. Kate recovered a little from the spell of silence as she took into her hands the cords of the rudder, and looked on at her companion’s struggle against the current. “It must be hard work,” she said. “How is it you are so fond of taking trouble, you men? They say it ruins your health rowing in all those boat-races and things—all for the pleasure of beating the other colleges or the other university; and you kill yourselves for that! I should like to do it for something better worth, if it were me.”
“But if you don’t get the habit of the struggle, you will want training when you try for what is better worth,” said John. “How one talks! I say you, as if by any chance you could want to struggle for anything. Pardon the profanity—I did not mean that.”
“Why shouldn’t I want to struggle?” said Kate, opening her eyes very wide. “I do, sometimes—that is, I don’t like to be beaten; nobody does, I suppose. But hard work must be a great bore. I sit and look at my maid sometimes, and think, after all, how much superior she is to me. There she sits, stitching, stitching the whole day through, and it does not seem to do her any harm—whereas it would kill one of us. And then I order this superior being about—me, the most useless wretch! and she gets up from her work to do a hundred things for me which I could quite well do for myself. Life is very odd,” said the young moralist, pulling the wrong string, and sending the boat high and dry upon a most visible bank of weeds and gravel. “Oh, Mr John, I am sure I beg your pardon! What have I done?”
“Nothing of the least importance,” said John; and while Kate sat dismayed and wondering, he had plunged into the sparkling shallow stream, and pushed the fairy vessel off into its necessary depth of water. “Only pardon me for jumping in in this wild way and sprinkling your dress,” he said, as he took his seat and his oars again. Kate was silent for the moment. She gazed at him with her pretty eyes, and her lips apart, wondering at the water-god; from which it will be clear to the reader that Kate Crediton was unused to river navigation, and the ways of boating men.
“But you will catch your death of cold, and what will your mother say?” said Kate; and this danger filled her with such vivid feminine apprehensions, that it was some time before she could be consoled. And then the talk ran on about a multitude of things—about nothing in particular—while the one interlocutor steered wildly into all the difficulties possible, and the other toiled steadily against the current. It was a rapid, vehement little river, more like a Scotch or Welsh stream than a placid English one; and sometimes there were snags to be avoided, and sometimes shallows to be run upon, so that the voyage was not without excitement, with such a pilot at the helm.
But when John turned his little vessel, and it began to float down stream, the dreamy silence of the woodland walk began to steal over the two once more. “Ah! now the work is over,” Kate said, with a little sigh; “yes, it is very nice to float—but then one feels as if one’s own will had nothing to do with it. I begin to understand why the other is the best.”
“I suppose they are both best,” said John—which was not a very profound observation; and yet he sighed too. “And then it is so much easier in everything to go with the stream, and to do what you are expected to do.”
“But is it right?” said Kate, with solemnity. “Ah! now I know what you are thinking about. I have so wanted to speak to you ever since that night. Don’t you think that doing what you are expected to do would be wrong? I have thought so much about it——”
“Have you?” said John; and a delicious tear came to the foolish fellow’s eye. “It was too good of you to think of me at all.”
“Of course I could not help thinking of you,” said Kate, “after what you said. Perhaps you will not think my advice of much value; but I don’t think—I don’t really think you ought to do it. I feel that it would be wrong.”