Chapter 11. Lady Maud's Walk

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eleven of An Angler's Hours by Hugh Tempest, Sheringham.
This liverovox recording is in the public domain. Chapter eleven
Lady Maude's Walk, an essay in in consequence, I am
full of problems. Last Sunday afternoon, there were most certainly

(00:23):
eight of them in that wooden box under the yew hedge,
and now there are but two. And yet no human
hand has touched bowl or jack in the interval. Six
days have passed since then, and with each day or
anyhow for each has disappeared at one round plaything. It

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is just so RESTful and sufficient an inquiry as is
suited to the afternoon of a Sunday in July, and
to Lady Maude's walk. Let me smoke a cigarette while
I think it out. The one great objection to perfect
comfort is that one has to move when one wants
to do anything, and a man recumbent on many cushions

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has much difficulty in finding his matches. Ah, here they are.
And now to thinking again, what was I thinking about?
How odd it is that I can never remember anything
in the country. Oh, yes, it was the bowls. They
have certainly disappeared, and as certainly I have not moved them,

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nor has any one else. It seems almost as though
they must have been spirited away. Can Lady Maude have
taken them? And if so, what can she have wanted
with them? It must be five centuries since her fair
brow was wrinkled over, the problem still unresolved by her sex.

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As to what the bias is and how you obtain
the benefit of it, I don't know either, But then
I'm a dweller in cities and cannot be expected to
know about rural pastimes. If I lived permanently in the
neighborhood of a bowl in Green, I think I would
try to find out. I dare say I am perpetrating

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a historical crime in mentioning Lady Maude and bowls in
the same breath. Were they invented in her day? How
helpless a creature is man without his books? But they
must have been, for what is it? The King of
Hungary says when he is devising schemes of his daughter's amusement,

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and one hundred knights truly told shall play with bowls
in alley's cold. But it does not follow that Lady
Maude knows a bowl when she sees it. She may
not have had actual experience of one. Perhaps poor unquiet
lady she took them to be skulls, relics of the

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rude forefathers of the hamlet, A natural mistake enough for
a lady long dead and probably unlearned in anatomy, And
if it were not Sunday, I would almost say permissible,
when I consider the descendants of the rude forefathers and
the seeming texture of their heads. If that was her thought,

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it was but becoming in her to grieve over their
unburied state, and to carry them over to the churchyard,
without the garden there, to repose decently in some hollow tomb. Truly,
comfort is a great stimulus to unprejudiced thought. I am
able to look at a question from all sides today,

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and on further consideration, I see that I'm doing Lady
Maude a great injustice in impugning to her ignorance of skulls.
No doubt she saw plenty of them. She lived in
the good old times, where skeletons and even horrid corpses
dabbled in gold or were to be met at every turn.

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Horrors and yet more horrors made up the life of man.
One wonders that he had the spirit even to invent bowls.
In any case, I think I may exonerate Lady Maude
for five centuries. She has been too full of her
own sorrows to think of trivialities, be they bowls or skulls.

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How difficult it is to get at the truth of things.
This is not meant to be a wise reflection. One
cannot be very wise on a hot afternoon in July.
But in some sort to excuse myself to myself for
not having made sure of Lady Maud and her legend,
A little research would probably have revealed to me the

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whole story, with names, reasons and dates. Some relation was
she to John of Gaunt, daughter possibly, or it may
have been daughter in law. But I do not greatly
care historic accuracies for pale people in the British Museum,
not for me on the grass with my mind full

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of bowls. So far as I have heard it, Thus
runs the tale back from the wars came the Squire,
Lady Maud's stripling son, who had gone forth to win
his spurs, And it was here on this terrace walk
that they first met. In the dusk of a late
autumn afternoon, mother and son fell on each other's necks,

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and in this close embrace, her jealous husband found them.
A man of his age, he saw in the situation
something that called for vengeance first and explanation after. And
springing upon the pair, he seized the youth in his
mighty arms, and without more ado tossed him over the
parapet into the river. This done, I suppose, he questioned

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Lady Maud as to the identity of the man drowning below.
Or it may be that he heard his son's last
cry and recognize the voice. In all events, horror struck
by what he had done, he rushed from the terrace,
sprang upon his horse, and rode madly out into the night.
And as he rode his horse cast a shoe, which

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now hangs on the church door in confirmation of the tale.
Should further proof be needed, the skeptic has only to
repair to the terrace at midnight, and if he is
probably constituted, he can see Lady Maude herself pacing to
and fro or wringing her hands. I'm not sure that
i'd tell the legend to write, some say, was lady

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Maude herself who was holed over the wall, and that
her angry lord had some justification inasmuch as the gallant
was not even distantly related to her. But it does
not matter which story is the true one. The important
thing is that the lady still walks, and that I
am told is indubitable. It is not given to everybody

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to see ghosts. I was recently here at midnight myself
and saw nothing, although I am not altogether surprised, for
it was not in the hope of seeing her that
I came, and indeed, if I had expected to see her,
I might not have come. There is a huge, agile worm,

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known to anglers as the lob worm, who takes his
walks abroad only under the stars. Him must you pursue
with guile and a bedroom candlestick to light your path.
On a shining night, when the dew lies thick. You
shall see him spread at ease inches long on the

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smooth lawn. He has both head and tail, and while
his head wanders abroad, for safety's sake, he always keeps
the tip of his tail in his hole, so that
when he is alarmed, he can retreat awkward quicker than
thought can fly. It is your business to grasp him
with finger and thumb before he is frightened. And very

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sure and rapid must you be, and you must know
which end of him is head, so that you must
grasp the other, or he will slip through your hand
like an eel. Even when you have him firmly, you
will find that his tail clings marvelously to earth, and
if you pull too hard, he breaks in twain. But

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if you work him gently, as one works a loose
nail out of wood, he will yield, and gradually all
his great length is your own. When you have him,
you have an excellent bait to your angle rod. But
as I have shown in the Catching, he needs to
be handled with as much love and tenderness as Master

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Walton's frog itself. I'm not ashamed of having hunted him here,
but I'm glad Lady Mare did not happen upon me
while I was doing so. The disembodied spirit and the
maker of earth are too incongruous, and she might conceivably
have resented my preference for the worm. Even the ghost

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of a woman, I suppose does not like being scorned.
But I could not exist within a few yards of
Thames unless I had lobworms in store for the river
below is the Thames in infancy, innocent as yet of
locks and weirs, almost ignorant of boats, but not too

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young to be full of fish. Immediately under the old
ivy mantled wall, Thames is a standing lesson to those
who forget that they have ever been young. He is
no more than six inches of crystal, spreaded over six
yards of gold, and looking on him flowing thus softly,

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I have wondered how it came about that the victim
of the tragedy could possibly have been drowned. But I
am told that the winter rains make a different river
of him, a foaming, swirling torrent, which would bear the
strongest swimmer away. Indeed, a mile higher up, I was
shown grassy dykes in a meadow where the river turns

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a sharp corner, which I wrongly took to be relics
of some Roman camp. I was informed that there were
nothing of the sort, but merely the river's winter channel.
It appears that when he is swollen and proud, he
disdains his banks at this point and rushes headlong across
the fields, taking a short cut to his proper channel.

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Lower down. He may be very grand in winter. In fact,
in places he is said to be a mile wide.
But I prefer him as he is now, a bright
little trout stream. A trout stream, I take it is
a stream that all to hold trout. Otherwise I could

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not give him the honorable title, for you shall not
meet with a trout in a mile of him. For
all his importance in winter, he is not yet old
enough or wise enough to have thought out his latest
and greatest triumph, the spotted monster, which has made his
name famous. Wherever angler farsens reel to rod, what trout

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he has to show our small ones borrowed from his tributaries.
But though he fails in that respect, in the matter
of chub, it would be hard to find his equal.
I know a quiet corner a few hundred yards away,
where in a clear spot, between the rushes and the
water lily leaves, lie some half dozen chub of astonishing magnitude.

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Two of these are certainly the better part of a
yard long. And there they will lie forever, I suppose,
for no lure of veils against them. In the deep
weedy holes. Here and there are great pike and perch,
and everywhere are roach and dace, but July is still

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too early for bottom fishing. It is a month for
meditation in the shade until the evening, when you may
put on waders and fish this delightful shallow for dace
with a dry fly. One of the few books that
I carry with me on a holiday is the Council's
Civil and Moral of Francis Bacon. It gives me a

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comfortable sensation of the possession of wisdom, without the trouble
of acquiring it. As a matter of fact, the only
thing I have read in the volume since I have
been here is the Essay on Gardens. It now lies
open on the grass beside me at this passage. The
green hath two pleasures, the one because nothing is more

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pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.
The other because it will give you a fair alley
in the midst by which you may go in front
upon a stately hedge, which is to enclose the garden.
Bacon had a fine feeling for grass, and I think
he would have commended Lady Maude's walk, which is some

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thirty five yards of green velvet, separated from the river
by the ancient wall and from the world by a
stately hedge of yew. It is really wonderful grass, close
set with scarce a base weed in it. It reminds
me of the Oxford Gardener and the five pound note.

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An American gentleman who was much struck with the lawns
of one of the colleges drew the head gardener aside
and promised him a five pound note if he would
divulge the secret of lawn making. The gardener agreed to
the bargain, took the five pound note and divulge the secret. Well, sir,

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it's principally rolling and mowing. You roll the lawn, and
you mow the lawn, and when it's very dry, you
water it of an evening, And when you've done that
carefully for five hundred years, you'll have a lawn something
like this. I wish I knew what the Americans said

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or did. There are two places where the wall has
lost a few stones, and is thus low enough for
a man to lean on his elbows and look over
into the river twenty feet below, or across the stream
to the great grass meadow opposite. There is something strange
about that meadow or plain, as from its size it

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deserves to be called a man standing in it fishing
in the river, shall ever and anon hear sounds behind him,
as of men brushing hurriedly through the long dry grass.
But when he looks round he shall only see the
distant trees with cows under them, and perhaps a plover
or two wheeling across the cloud flecked blue. Nevertheless, there

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are men hurrying to and fro under the noonday sun,
men whose footsteps can be heard, but whose feet cannot
be seen. There was a great battle fought here ages ago,
before ever the Norman had set his seal on the land,
and doubtless the slaughter was immense. But why they should

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still hurry across the meadow in the sunlight I know not.
Perhaps the persistent foot of the angler anoise them, and
they follow him, as who should say, there, let the
wind sweep and the plover cry, but thou go by.
I begin to think that this place, in spite of

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its beauty and ancient peace, is just a trifle vero
much in touch with the other world. I have never
before lighted on a spot so be haunted of Lady
Maud and the phantom army across the river. I have spoken,
there are others as well. The old Rectory House is
full of them. It is the most delightful house in

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the world. You enter it, turn a corner, go up
ten steps, turn another corner, go along a passage, turn
another corner, and go down three steps, and you are lost.
I'm lost two or three times a day when this happens.
I sit down on a step and wait for a guide,
and if no one comes within the next half hour

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or so, I cry aloud for aid. Little inconveniences of
this kind do not matter here, where all is leisure.
But in a house which is capable of losing half
a dozen people all at once in different directions, you
may confidently expect now and then to meet persons in
strange garb who do not really exist. There is somebody

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who walks past some of the ground floor windows. Just
about tea time, you hear a rustling through the open window,
and you glance hurriedly out, just in time to see
a misty figure go by. There is somebody who sits
in the entrance hall in the morning, a boy of
about fifteen. Some say there is a restless lady who

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patrols the stairs and passages. These are harmless enough but
there is another whom I would not meet for worlds.
A delightful sitting room looks away over the lawns and
river to the west. This was once a bedroom. But
one night, or rather one early morning, the sleeper was

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awakened by a clutch on his throat, and to his
alarm he saw in the half light a dark figure
stooping over him. As he became wider awake, it drew
itself up, passed through the bear and wall, and disappeared.
Since I heard this, Tiel eight, do not sleep so

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well more, especially as I am informed that neither this
sitting room nor the rest of the house is considered
to be haunted much. The haunted room is the one
which I have the honor to occupy. It looks harmless
enough in the daytime, too, a little long room with

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cheerful wallpaper and a tiny window, a real casement half
covered with a creeper. But at night the open half
of the casement looks like an empty frame. And I
lie awake, waiting in some apprehension for a white face
to come and fill it. And by why passing the
time of expectation, my too active memory brings up every

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horrible old story that I ever heard, what slaves we
are to our nerves. In theory, I do not believing ghosts,
but in practice I am only too ready to be convinced.
I sincerely hope that the homicidal ghost will not be
the agent chosen for my conversion. If his identity is

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guessed correctly, he is not a person to be encouraged,
for he is supposed to be the last of the
mad monks of Medmenham. I don't suppose he cares greatly
whether he is encouraged or not. Odor into dum metu
ant probably serves him for a motto if he still
retains any of his latinity. Talking of latinity, I wonder

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whether the Roman has any idea how important his grim
utterance has become as an incident of the consecutive use
of dum. Why is it that in book people preparing
for an interview with a ghost almost fortify themselves with
a revolver. Surely the only spirits to which that useful
implement could do any hurt would be the house old gods,

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and that would please a malevolent ghost of this kind
rather than alarm him. I suppose the idea is that
the weapon makes a cheerful noise when fired, and so
impresses the spirit of the departed with the great increase
in man's moral magnificence that has come about since his day.
But in spite of progress and moral magnificence, man with

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his poor three dimensions, is at a great disadvantage in
dealing with a being that comprehends four at will. Passive
resistance seems his only chance of coming out well of
the encounter. To say, grandly, with twofold stroch, hast thou
not a heart? Canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be?

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And as a child of freedom, though outcast, trample tofet
itself under thy feet while it consumes thee Let it come.
Then I will meet it and defy it, or more
humanely with that fine churchman of the old school, when
hard pressed by his obstinate parishioners. My attitude, gentlemen, is

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to lie on my back and kick either way of
meeting the enemy. Commands my admiration, and I wish they
may occur to me when the moment of trial comes.
Lat it anguis in herber This garden seems to be
alive with snakes. There goes the fourth I have seen

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today two of them swam across the river. A swimming
snake is a graceful by duncanny sight. He goes through
the water like a corkscrew, with his horrid head upraised,
as though seeking whom he may devour. Fortunately, these are
only grass snakes, but as a cautious Londoner, I suspect

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that there are adders about two. A pretty moral tale
of my childchild Whood comes into my mind, which relates
how two children clad in shining white robes were put
into a garden with instructions to play about as good
children should. They were allowed to do anything except dirty

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their garments and approach a certain old wall. Naturally, the
bad child not only dirtied his robe hopelessly, but also
went and climbed about the wall, whereupon it was bitten
by an adder. How it all ended, I do not remember,
But this is just such a wall, and I see

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in myself a certain likeness to that bad child. It
is much too hot to climb the wall, but I
am proposing in its shadow, while in the distance I
can hear the good child singing a hymn in the
hot weather. The Sunday school is held in the rectory
garden close to the old Sundial, and the opening hymn

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sounds very pleasant and soothing. From afar, A whimsical idea
of an open air cure for English music comes across
me distance, and the summer breezes have a most refining
effect on the raw effort. But I fear it would
not achieve its object. After all, it is not English

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music that is at fault, but that glorious and barbaric power,
the British public, which insists on having what it wants,
even if it has to pay for it. They that
pay the piper must call the tune, And if the
tune they call is a poor one, it is not
the piper's fault. He has to live poor man in

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spite of the voltaires his critics. I do not know
why I should have been betrayed into airing an urban grievance,
unless it is that I have not yet got over
my indignation at hearing on the first evening of my
stay here the bray of a concertina, which, after a
few preliminary and unpremeditated rural effects, plunged recklessly into the

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latest atrocity. A hideous ode written by some cosmopolitan indar
in commemoration of a victory gained in the lists of
love by some commercial hieron from the United States, a
vile piece of romance by gaslight that had actually driven
me out of London for rest and change. But these

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thoughts are out of keeping with Sunday School, or anyhow
the expression of them may become so. And as I
am not a great poet, I must be careful. I
wish I were a poet a word's worth, for instance,
then instead of talking nonsense, I should be extracting immortality
out of my surroundings by shall we say, for quatrains

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descriptive of the startling effect produced on a dandelion by
the singing of a children's hymn, as witnessed by the
recumbent but accurate poet. But who am I that I
should be irreverent? I do not forget that of the
two voices, one is of the deep. Let me think

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of something else. Somebody I think it was Sydney Smith
said that the further he went west, the more convinced
he became of the abiding truth that the wise men
came from the East. I wonder if the evidence is sound?
How else should it have come about that I was
invited to play for the village team yesterday. When the

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captain found that the eleventh hour had come without its man,
I acquired no glory and helped my side not a whit.
One catch indeed came in my direction, and I stretched
out unwilling hands to miss it. However, the ball smoked

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my thumb with great violence, so that I must have
conquered my natural timidity to some extent. In days of old,
when I was a constant cricketer, I used to be
rather skillful at missing the ball by a few inches
only after an obvious effort to reach it, so that
to all appearances I was a well intentioned, if unsuccessful

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field But now I am sadly out of practice, and
my thumb is still painful. I am told that the
bowling of the other side was naught. In fine cricketing phrase,
the trundlers rolled up tosh. That may have been so
in fact, but to me the uttermost tosh has a

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habit of being very fast and alarming. I did make
one run by accident, but it was not accounted to
me for merit. At least it did not appear in
my score. And I have no doubt that ethically they
were right in calling it to buy, and so did
not complain. We were beaten, which I regret, though as

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a mere substitute, I did not feel that the responsibility
is mine. One of our umpires was accused of umpiring
for his side, which produced a lengthy and heated discussion
in the field. Much testimony was born, and great irony
brought to bear on the situation, and the heart of
the opposing captain was moved within him that he spake, well,

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if you want the game, we'll give it you now.
Thereafter he retired to the deep field and took no
further interest in the proceedings for fully half an hour. Nevertheless,
he returned in time to bowl me out, which was
inconsistent of him, as his side was winning all along.

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When a man acts the part of Achilles, he ought
to do it thoroughly. I wonder why it is that
once temper is so much more uncertain when one is
engaged in amusement than when one is occupied with the
affairs of life. I once knew a man who was
universally beloved and respected, until an evil hour he was

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persuaded to make a trial of what is known as
scientific croquet, an absurd game with boundaries and all kinds
of needless difficulties. He rapidly became an enthusiast, and less
rapidly as something of an expert and an exact proportion.
As his reputation as a player increased, so did his

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value as a social unit decline. And at last all
the ladies in the neighborhood refused to play with him
because his language was so unnerving. But when he was
not engaged in playing croquet, a thing which became somewhat rare,
those who were intimate with him said he was still
the well mannered man he had ever been. I suppose

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he belonged to that large class of Englishmen who cannot
endure to be beaten a virtue, no doubt in great matters,
but in small ones, something of a nuisance. Cricket is exhausting.
At least, I suppose it is the cricket that makes
me feel so commonplace. I'm dropping into that condition in

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which a man might easily compose moral maxims and glory
in so doing that I will never permit while I
can help it. Therefore, for a while I will think
and say no more tea time? Did you say, no,
I have not been asleep, but only lost in profound meditation.

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Has the Sunday school gone good? What? You have found
three of the bowls on the tennis lawn, and they
have been gnawed. All right, I'm coming well. I was
right in exonerating Lady Moored, but I wonder I didn't
think of the dogs. And now for my well earned

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tea and of chapter eleven.