Tono Bungay

I remember something, but not so much of it as I should like to recall, of my long tramp to Bladesover House.  The distance from Chatham is almost exactly seventeen miles, and it took me until nearly one.  It was very interesting and I do not think I was very fatigued, though I got rather pinched by one boot.

The morning must have been very clear, because I remember that near Itchinstow Hall I looked back and saw the estuary of the Thames, that river that has since played so large a part in my life.  But at the time I did not know it was the Thames, I thought this great expanse of mud flats and water was the sea, which I had never yet seen nearly.  And out upon it stood ships, sailing ships and a steamer or so, going up to London or down out into the great seas of the world.  I stood for a long time watching these and thinking whether after all I should not have done better to have run away to sea.

The nearer I drew to Bladesover, the more doubtful I grew of the duality of my reception, and the more I regretted that alternative.  I suppose it was the dirty clumsiness of the shipping I had seen nearly, that put me out of mind of that.  I took a short cut through the Warren across the corner of the main park to intercept the people from the church.  I wanted to avoid meeting any one before I met my mother, and so I went to a place where the path passed between banks, and without exactly hiding, stood up among the bushes.  This place among other advantages eliminated any chance of seeing Lady Drew, who would drive round by the carriage road.

Standing up to waylay in this fashion I had a queer feeling of brigandage, as though I was some intrusive sort of bandit among these orderly things.  It is the first time I remember having that outlaw feeling distinctly, a feeling that has played a large part in my subsequent life.  I felt there existed no place for me that I had to drive myself in.

Presently, down the hill, the servants appeared, straggling by twos and threes, first some of the garden people and the butler’s wife with them, then the two laundry maids, odd inseparable old creatures, then the first footman talking to the butler’s little girl, and at last, walking grave and breathless beside old Ann and Miss Fison, the black figure of my mother.

My boyish mind suggested the adoption of a playful form of appearance.  “Coo-ee, mother” said I, coming out against the sky,”Coo-ee!”

My mother looked up, went very white, and put her hand to her bosom.

I suppose there was a fearful fuss about me.  And of course I was quite unable to explain my reappearance.  But I held out stoutly, “I won’t go back to Chatham; I’ll drown myself first.”  The next day my mother carried me off to Wimblehurst, took me fiercely and aggressively to an uncle I had never heard of before, near though the place was to us.  She gave me no word as to what was to happen, and I was too subdued by her manifest wrath and humiliation at my last misdemeanour to demand information.  I don’t for one moment think Lady Drew was “nice” about me.  The finality of my banishment was endorsed and underlined and stamped home.  I wished very much now that I had run away to sea, in spite of the coal dust and squalour Rochester had revealed to me.  Perhaps over seas one came to different lands.