THE
ROMAN ROAD
All the roads of our neighbourhood were cheerful
and friendly, having each of them pleasant qualities of their own; but this one
seemed different from the others in its masterful suggestion of a serious
purpose, speeding you along with a strange uplifting of the heart. The others
tempted chiefly with their treasures of hedge and ditch; the rapt surprise of
the first lords-and-ladies, the rustle of a field-mouse, splash of a frog;
while cool noses of brother-beasts were pushed at you through gate or gap. A loiterer
you had need to be, did you choose one of them,—so many were the tiny hands
thrust out to detain you, from this side and that. But this other was of a
sterner sort, and even in its shedding off of bank and hedgerow as it marched
straight and full for the open downs, it seemed to declare its contempt for
adventitious trappings to catch the shallow-pated. When the sense of injustice
or disappointment was heavy on me, and things were very black within, as on
this particular day, the road of character was my choice for that solitary
ramble, when I turned my back for an afternoon on a world that had
unaccountably declared itself against me.
“The Knights’
Road,” we children had named it, from a sort of feeling that, if from any
quarter at all, it would be down this track we might some day see Lancelot and
his peers come pacing on their great war-horses,—supposing that any of the
stout band still survived, in nooks and unexplored places. Grown-up people
sometimes spoke of it as the “Pilgrims’ Way”; but I didn’t know much about
pilgrims,—except Walter in the Horselberg story. Him I sometimes saw, breaking
with haggard eyes out of yonder copse, and calling to the pilgrims as they
hurried along on their desperate march to the Holy City, where peace and pardon
were awaiting them. “All roads lead to Rome,” I had once heard somebody say;
and I had taken the remark very seriously, of course, and puzzled over it many
days. There must have been some mistake, I concluded at last; but of one road
at least I intuitively felt it to be true. And my belief was clinched by
something that fell from Miss Smedley during a history lesson, about a strange
road that ran right down the middle of England till it reached the coast, and
then began again in France, just opposite, and so on undeviating, through city
and vineyard, right from the misty Highlands to the Eternal City.
Uncorroborated, any statement of Miss Smedley’s usually fell on incredulous
ears; but here, with the road itself in evidence, she seemed, once, in a way,
to have strayed into truth.
Rome! It was
fascinating to think that it lay at the other end of this white ribbon that
rolled itself off from my feet over the distant downs. I was not quite so
uninstructed as to imagine l could reach it that afternoon; but some day, I
thought, if things went on being as unpleasant as they were now,—some day, when
Aunt Eliza had gone on a visit,—we would see.
I tried to
imagine what it would be like when I got there. The Coliseum I knew, of course,
from a woodcut in the history-book: so to begin with I plumped that down in the
middle. The rest had to be patched up from the little grey market-town where
twice a year we went to have our hair cut; hence, in the result, Vespasian’s
amphitheatre was approached by muddy little streets, wherein the Red Lion and
the Blue Boar, with Somebody’s Entire along their front, and “Commercial Room”
on their windows; the doctor’s house, of substantial red-brick; and the facade
of the New Wesleyan Chapel, which we thought very fine, were the chief architectural
ornaments: while the Roman populace pottered about in smocks and corduroys,
twisting the tails of Roman calves and inviting each other to beer in musical
Wessex. From Rome I drifted on to other cities, dimly heard of—Damascus,
Brighton (Aunt Eliza’s ideal), Athens, and Glasgow, whose glories the gardener
sang; but there was a certain sameness in my conception of all of them: that
Wesleyan chapel would keep cropping up everywhere. It was easier to go
a-building among those dream-cities where no limitations were imposed, and one
was sole architect, with a free hand. Down a delectable street of cloud-built
palaces I was mentally pacing, when I happened upon the Artist.
He was seated at
work by the roadside, at a point whence the cool large spaces of the downs,
juniper-studded, swept grandly westwards. His attributes proclaimed him of the
artist tribe: besides, he wore knickerbockers like myself,—a garb confined, I
was aware, to boys and artists. I knew I was not to bother him with questions,
nor look over his shoulder and breathe in his ear—they didn’t like it, this
genus irritabile; but there was nothing about staring in my code of
instructions, the point having somehow been overlooked: so, squatting down on
the grass, I devoted myself to a passionate absorbing of every detail. At the
end of five minutes there was not a button on him that I could not have passed
an examination in; and the wearer himself of that homespun suit was probably
less familiar with its pattern and texture than I was. Once he looked up,
nodded, half held out his tobacco pouch,—mechanically, as it were,—then,
returning it to his pocket, resumed his work, and I my mental photography.
After another
five minutes or so had passed he remarked, without looking my way: “Fine
afternoon we’re having: going far to-day?”
“No, I’m not
going any farther than this,” I replied; “I WAS thinking of going on to Rome
but I’ve put it off.”
“Pleasant place,
Rome,” he murmured; “you’ll like it.” It was some minutes later that he added:
“But I wouldn’t go just now, if I were you,—too jolly hot.”
“YOU haven’t been
to Rome, have you?” I inquired.
“Rather,” he
replied, briefly; “I live there.”
This was too
much, and my jaw dropped as I struggled to grasp the fact that I was sitting
there talking to a fellow who lived in Rome. Speech was out of the question:
besides, I had other things to do. Ten solid minutes had I already spent in an
examination of him as a mere stranger and artist; and now the whole thing had
to be done over again, from the changed point of view. So I began afresh, at
the crown of his soft hat, and worked down to his solid British shoes, this
time investing everything with the new Roman halo; and at last I managed to get
out: “But you don’t really live there, do you?” never doubting the fact, but
wanting to hear it repeated.
“Well,” he said,
good-naturedly overlooking the slight rudeness of my query, “I live there as
much as l live anywhere,—about half the year sometimes. I’ve got a sort of a
shanty there. You must come and see it some day.”
“But do you live
anywhere else as well?” I went on, feeling the forbidden tide of questions
surging up within me.
“O yes, all over
the place,” was his vague reply. “And I’ve got a diggings somewhere off
Piccadilly.”
“Where’s that?” I
inquired.
“Where’s what?”
said he. “Oh, Piccadilly! It’s in London.”
“Have you a large
garden?” I asked; “and how many pigs have you got?”
“I’ve no garden
at all,” he replied, sadly, “and they don’t allow me to keep pigs, though I’d
like to, awfully. It’s very hard.”
“But what do you
do all day, then,” I cried, “and where do you go and play, without any garden,
or pigs, or things?”
“When I want to
play,” he said, gravely, “I have to go and play in the street; but it’s poor
fun, I grant you. There’s a goat, though, not far off, and sometimes I talk to
him when I’m feeling lonely; but he’s very proud.”
“Goats ARE
proud,” I admitted. “There’s one lives near here, and if you say anything to
him at all, he hits you in the wind with his head. You know what it feels like when
a fellow hits you in the wind?”
“I do, well,” he
replied, in a tone of proper melancholy, and painted on.
“And have you
been to any other places,” I began again, presently, “besides Rome and
Piccy-what’s-his-name?”
“Heaps,” he said.
“I’m a sort of Ulysses—seen men and cities, you know. In fact, about the only
place I never got to was the Fortunate Island.”
I began to like
this man. He answered your questions briefly and to the point, and never tried
to be funny. I felt I could be confidential with him.
“Wouldn’t you
like,” I inquired, “to find a city without any people in it at all?”
He looked
puzzled. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” said he.
“I mean,” I went
on eagerly, “a city where you walk in at the gates, and the shops are all full
of beautiful things, and the houses furnished as grand as can be, and there
isn’t anybody there whatever! And you go into the shops, and take anything you
want—chocolates and magic lanterns and injirubber balls—and there’s nothing to
pay; and you choose your own house and live there and do just as you like, and
never go to bed unless you want to!”
The artist laid
down his brush. “That WOULD be a nice city,” he said. “Better than Rome. You
can’t do that sort of thing in Rome,—or in Piccadilly either. But I fear it’s
one of the places I’ve never been to.”
“And you’d ask
your friends,” I went on, warming to my subject,—“only those you really like,
of course,—and they’d each have a house to themselves,—there’d be lots of
houses,—and no relations at all, unless they promised they’d be pleasant, and
if they weren’t they’d have to go.”
“So you wouldn’t
have any relations?” said the artist. “Well, perhaps you’re right. We have
tastes in common, I see.”
“I’d have
Harold,” I said, reflectively, “and Charlotte. They’d like it awfully. The
others are getting too old. Oh, and Martha—I’d have Martha, to cook and wash up
and do things. You’d like Martha. She’s ever so much nicer than Aunt Eliza.
She’s my idea of a real lady.”
“Then I’m sure I
should like her,” he replied, heartily, “and when I come to—what do you call
this city of yours? Nephelo—something, did you say?”
“I—I don’t know,”
I replied, timidly. “I’m afraid it hasn’t got a name—yet.”
The artist gazed
out over the downs. “‘The poet says, dear city of Cecrops;’” he said, softly,
to himself, “‘and wilt not thou say, dear city of Zeus?’ That’s from Marcus
Aurelius,” he went on, turning again to his work. “You don’t know him, I
suppose; you will some day.”
“Who’s he?” I
inquired.
“Oh, just another
fellow who lived in Rome,” he replied, dabbing away.
“O dear!” I
cried, disconsolately. “What a lot of people seem to live at Rome, and I’ve
never even been there! But I think I’d like MY city best.”
“And so would I,”
he replied with unction. “But Marcus Aurelius wouldn’t, you know.”
“Then we won’t
invite him,” I said, “will we?”
“I won’t if you
won’t,” said he. And that point being settled, we were silent for a while.
“Do you know,” he
said, presently, “I’ve met one or two fellows from time to time who have been
to a city like yours,—perhaps it was the same one. They won’t talk much about
it—only broken hints, now and then; but they’ve been there sure enough. They
don’t seem to care about anything in particular—and every thing’s the same to
them, rough or smooth; and sooner or later they slip off and disappear; and you
never see them again. Gone back, I suppose.”
“Of course,” said
I. “Don’t see what they ever came away for; I wouldn’t,—to be told you’ve
broken things when you haven’t, and stopped having tea with the servants in the
kitchen, and not allowed to have a dog to sleep with you. But I’ve known
people, too, who’ve gone there.”
The artist
stared, but without incivility.
“Well, there’s
Lancelot,” I went on. “The book says he died, but it never seemed to read right,
somehow. He just went away, like Arthur. And Crusoe, when he got tired of
wearing clothes and being respectable. And all the nice men in the stones who
don’t marry the Princess, ‘cos only one man ever gets married in a book, you
know. They’ll be there!”
“And the men who
never come off,” he said, “who try like the rest, but get knocked out, or
somehow miss,—or break down or get bowled over in the melee,—and get no
Princess, nor even a second-class kingdom,—some of them’ll be there, I hope?”
“Yes, if you
like,” I replied, not quite understanding him; “if they’re friends of yours,
we’ll ask ‘em, of course.”
“What a time we
shall have!” said the artist, reflectively; “and how shocked old Marcus
Aurelius will be!”
The shadows had
lengthened uncannily, a tide of golden haze was flooding the grey-green surface
of the downs, and the artist began to put his traps together, preparatory to a
move. I felt very low; we would have to part, it seemed, just as we were
getting on so well together. Then he stood up, and he was very straight and
tall, and the sunset was in his hair and beard as he stood there, high over me.
He took my hand like an equal. “I’ve enjoyed our conversation very much,” he
said. “That was an interesting subject you started, and we haven’t half
exhausted it. We shall meet again, I hope.”
“Of course we
shall,” I replied, surprised that there should be any doubt about it.
“In Rome,
perhaps?” said he.
“Yes, in Rome,” I
answered, “or Piccy-the-other-place, or somewhere.”
“Or else,” said
he, “in that other city,—when we’ve found the way there. And I’ll look out for
you, and you’ll sing out as soon as you see me. And we’ll go down the street
arm-in-arm, and into all the shops, and then I’ll choose my house, and you’ll
choose your house, and we’ll live there like princes and good fellows.”
“Oh, but you’ll
stay in my house, won’t you?” I cried; “wouldn’t ask everybody; but I’ll ask
YOU.”
He affected to
consider a moment; then “Right!” he said: “I believe you mean it, and I WILL
come and stay with you. I won’t go to anybody else, if they ask me ever so
much. And I’ll stay quite a long time, too, and I won’t be any trouble.”
Upon this compact
we parted, and I went down-heartedly from the man who understood me, back to
the house where I never could do anything right. How was it that everything
seemed natural and sensible to him, which these uncles, vicars, and other
grown-up men took for the merest tomfoolery? Well, he would explain this, and
many another thing, when we met again. The Knights’ Road! How it always brought
consolation! Was he possibly one of those vanished knights I had been looking
for so long? Perhaps he would be in armour next time,—why not? He would look
well in armour, I thought. And I would take care to get there first, and see the
sunlight flash and play on his helmet and shield, as he rode up the High Street
of the Golden City.
Meantime, there
only remained the finding it,—an easy matter.
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