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The Bishop, however, soon brought all to reason, and as a punishment the men of Strood were obliged to go in procession to Rochester upon each Whit-Monday, carrying the clubs with which they had assaulted the monks. That Strood stood on the ancient way its name assures us, since it is but another form of Street or Strada, as they say in Italy.
From Strood we cross the great iron bridge, the successor of that at the Strood end of which Bishop Glanville built a small chapel. The story of the bridge is interesting. We do not know that there was a bridge at all in Roman times, but certainly a wooden bridge was supplemented in the time of Richard II. by a new one of stone, consisting of twenty-one arches of different spans.
A singular example of the hatred of these for the monks of Rochester appears in the story of the fight between the monks and the Hospital staff with whom sided the men of Strood and Frinsbury, a village hard by, which took place in the orchard of the Hospital.
And now let us fancy our friends up, and down, Shooter's Hill, through Dartford, Northfleet, and Gravesend at which latter place, the first foreign symptom appears, in words, "Poste aux Chevaux," on the door-post of the inn; and let us imagine them bowling down Rochester Hill at a somewhat amended pace, with the old castle, by the river Medway, the towns of Chatham, Strood and Rochester full before them, and the finely wooded country extending round in pleasing variety of hill and dale.
The light striking upward through the green shade gave to Kenyon's face an extraordinary pallor. But it seemed to Chayne that not all the pallor was due to the lamp. "For six seasons," Chayne said, "Gabriel Strood came to the Alps. In his first season he made a great name." "He was the best climber I have ever seen," replied Kenyon. "He had a passion for the mountains.
"Yes," replied Kenyon, quietly, "a Zermatt you are too young to know," and then Chayne's forefinger dropped upon the figure of Sylvia's father. "Who is this?" he asked. Kenyon made no answer. "It is Gabriel Strood," Chayne continued. There was a pause, and then Kenyon confirmed the guess. "Yes," he said, and some hint of emotion in his voice made Chayne lift his eyes.
And yet in spite of it, he had apparently for some seasons stood prominent in the Alpine fraternity. Gabriel Strood was afflicted with a weakness in the muscles of one thigh. Sylvia, according to her custom, began to picture him, began to talk with him.
Men like Gabriel Strood always come back to the Alps. They sleep too restlessly at nights, they needs must come. And yet this man had stayed away. There must have been some great impediment. He fell into another train of thought. Sylvia was eighteen, nearly nineteen. Had Gabriel Strood married just after that last season when he climbed from the Brenva Glacier to the Calotte.
Only twice had she succeeded at the last school concert when she had been too miserable to be nervous and Mr. Strood had told her she did him credit and, once she had sung "Chanson de Florian" in a way that had astonished her own listening ear the notes had laughed and thrilled out into the air and come back to her from the wall behind the piano.... The day before the tennis tournament.
Lo Rouchestre stant here fast by. One comes down the hill into Rochester, through Strood, on this side the Medway, to find little remaining of interest in a place that has now become scarcely more than a suburb of the episcopal city.
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