Certainly I had not come to York, as certainly I would not have gone
anywhere, for battle-fields, but becoming gradually sensible in that
city that the battle of Marston Moor was fought a few miles away, and
my enemy Charles I. put to one of his worst defeats there, I bought a
third-class ticket and ran out to the place one day for whatever emotion
awaited me there.
I
At an English station you are either overwhelmed with transportation,
or you are without any except such as you were born with, and at the
station for Marston Moor I asked for a fly in vain. But it was a most
walkable afternoon, and the pleasant road into the region which the
station-master indicated as that I was seeking invited the foot by its
level stretch, sometimes under wayside trees, but mostly between open
fields, newly reaped and still yellow with their stubble, or green with
the rowen clover. Sometimes it ran straight and sometimes it curved,
but it led so rarely near any human habitation that one would rather not
have met any tramps beside one’s self on it. Presently I overtook one, a
gentle old farm-wife, a withered blonde, whom I helped with the bundles
she bore in either hand, in the hope that she could tell me whether I
was near Marston Moor or not. But she could tell me only, what may have
been of higher human interest, that her husband had the grass farm of
a hundred and fifty acres, which we were coming to, for seventy-five
pounds a year; and they had their own cattle, sheep, and horses, and
were well content with themselves. She excused herself for not knowing
more than vaguely of the battle-field, as not having been many years
in the neighborhood; and being now come to a gate in the fields, she
thanked me and took her way up a grassy path to the pleasant farmhouse I
saw in the distance.
It must have been about this time that it rained, having shone long
enough for English weather, and it hardly held up before I was overtaken
by a friendly youth on a bicycle, whom I stayed with the question
uppermost in my mind. He promptly got off his wheel to grapple with the
problem. He was a comely young fellow, an artisan of some sort from
a neighboring town, and he knew the country well, but he did not know
where my lost battle-field was. He was sure that it was near by: but he
was sure there was no monument to mark the spot. Then we parted friends,
with many polite expressions, and he rode on and I walked on.
For a mile and more I met no other wayfarer, and as I felt that it was
time to ask for Marston Moor again, I was very glad to be overtaken by
a gentleman driving in a dog-cart, with his pretty young daughter on
the wide seat with him. He halted at sight of the elderly pilgrim, and
hospitably asked if he could not give him a lift, alleging that there
was plenty of room. He was interested in my search, which he was not
able definitely to promote, but he believed that if I would drive with
him to his place I could find the battle-field, and, anyhow, I could get
a trap back from the The Sun. I pleaded the heat I was in from walking,
and the danger for an old fellow of taking cold in a drive through the
cool air; and then, as old fellows do, we bantered each other about
our ages, each claiming to be older than the other, and the kind, sweet
young girl sat listening with that tolerance of youth for the triviality
of age which is so charming. When he could do no more, he said he was
sorry, and wished me luck, and drove on; and I being by this time tired
with my three miles’ tramp, took advantage of a wayside farmhouse, the
first in all the distance, and went in and asked for a cup of tea.
The farm-wife, who came in out of her back garden to answer my knock,
pleaded regretfully that her fire was down; but she thought I could
get tea at the next house; and she was very conversable about the
battle-field. She did not know just where it was, but she was sure it
was quite a mile farther on; and at that I gave up the hope of it along
with the tea. This is partly the reader’s loss, for I have no doubt
I could have been very graphic about it if I had found it; but as for
Marston Moor, I feel pretty certain that if it ever existed it does not
now. A moor, as I understand, implies a sort of wildness, but nothing
could be more domestic than the peaceful fields between which I had come
so far, and now easily found my way back to the station. Easily, I say,
but there was one point where the road forked, though I was sure it
had not forked before, and I felt myself confronted with some sort,
any sort, of exciting adventure. By taking myself firmly in hand, and
saying, “It was yonder to the left where I met my kind bicycler, and we
vainly communed of my evanescent battle-field,” and so keeping on, I got
safely to the station with nothing more romantic in my experience than a
thrilling apprehension.