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, the 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 one 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 I 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,—some day, 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 façade
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, faintly 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 the 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 I 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. ‘O, 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 there wouldn’t be any
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. O, 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.
‘O, 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 everything’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 stories 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 melée—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.
[Illustration: “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”]
‘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.’
‘O, but you’ll stay in my house, won’t you?’ I cried; ‘I 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.
[Illustration]