The Golden Age Part 7

She flung herself into hide-and-seek with all the gusto and abandonment of the true artist; and as she flitted away and reappeared, flushed and laughing divinely, the pale witch-maiden seemed to fall away from her, and she moved rather as that other girl I had read about, s.n.a.t.c.hed from fields of daffodil to reign in shadow below, yet permitted now and again to revisit earth and light and the frank, caressing air.

Tired at last, we strolled back to the old sun-dial, and Harold, who never relinquished a problem unsolved, began afresh, rubbing his finger along the faint incisions. '_Time tryeth trothe_. Please, I want to know what that means?'

Medea's face drooped low over the sun-dial, till it was almost hidden in her fingers. 'That's what I'm here for,' she said presently in quite a changed, low voice. 'They shut me up here--they think I'll forget--but I never will--never, never! And he, too--but I don't know--it is so long--I don't know!'

Her face was quite hidden now. There was silence again in the old garden. I felt clumsily helpless and awkward. Beyond a vague idea of kicking Harold, nothing remedial seemed to suggest itself.

None of us had noticed the approach of another she-creature--one of the angular and rigid cla.s.s--how different from our dear comrade! The years Medea had claimed might well have belonged to her; she wore mittens, too--a trick I detested in woman. 'Lucy!' she said sharply, in a tone with _aunt_ writ large over it; and Medea started up guiltily.

'You've been crying,' said the newcomer, grimly regarding her through spectacles. 'And pray who are these exceedingly dirty little boys?'

'Friends of mine, aunt,' said Medea promptly, with forced cheerfulness.

I--I've known them a long time. I asked them to come.'

The aunt sniffed suspiciously. 'You must come indoors, dear,' she said, 'and lie down. The sun will give you a headache. And you little boys had better run away home to your tea. Remember, you should not come to pay visits without your nursemaid.'

Harold had been tugging nervously at my jacket for some time, and I only waited till Medea turned and kissed a white hand to us as she was led away. Then I ran. We gained the boat in safety; and 'What an old dragon!' said Harold.

'Wasn't she a beast!' I replied. 'Fancy the sun giving any one a headache! But Medea was a real brick. Couldn't we carry her off?'

'We could if Edward was here,' said Harold confidently.

The question was, What had become of that defaulting hero? We were not left long in doubt. First, there came down the lane the shrill and wrathful clamour of a female tongue; then Edward, running his best; and then an excited woman hard on his heel. Edward tumbled into the bottom of the boat, gasping 'Shove her off!' And shove her off we did, mightily, while the dame abused us from the bank in the self-same accents in which Alfred hurled defiance at the marauding Dane.

'That was just like a bit out of _Westward Ho_!' I remarked approvingly, as we sculled down the stream. 'But what had you been doing to her?'

'Hadn't been doing anything,' panted Edward, still breathless. 'I went up into the village and explored, and it was a very nice one, and the people were very polite. And there was a blacksmith's forge there, and they were shoeing horses, and the hoofs fizzled and smoked, and smelt so jolly! I stayed there quite a long time. Then I got thirsty, so I asked that old woman for some water, and while she was getting it her cat came out of the cottage, and looked at me in a nasty sort of way, and said something I didn't like. So I went up to it just to--to teach it manners, and somehow or other, next minute it was up an apple-tree, spitting, and I was running down the lane with that old thing after me.'

Edward was so full of his personal injuries that there was no interesting him in Medea at all. Moreover, the evening was closing in, and it was evident that this cutting-out expedition must be kept for another day. As we neared home, it gradually occurred to us that perhaps the greatest danger was yet to come, for the farmer must have missed his boat ere now, and would probably be lying in wait for us near the landing-place. There was no other spot admitting of debarcation on the home side; if we got out on the other, and made for the bridge, we should certainly be seen and cut off. Then it was that I blessed my stars that our elder brother was with us that day. He might be little good at pretending, but in grappling with the stern facts of life he had no equal. Enjoining silence, he waited till we were but a little way from the fated landing-place, and then brought us in to the opposite bank. We scrambled out noiselessly and--the gathering darkness favouring us--crouched behind a willow, while Edward pushed off the empty boat with his foot. The old Argo, borne down by the gentle current, slid and grazed along the rushy bank; and when she came opposite the suspected ambush, a stream of imprecation told us that our precaution had not been wasted. We wondered, as we listened, where Farmer Larkin, who was bucolically bred and reared, had acquired such range and wealth of vocabulary. Fully realising at last that his boat was derelict, abandoned, at the mercy of wind and wave--as well as out of his reach--he strode away to the bridge, about a quarter of a mile further down; and as soon as we heard his boots clumping on the planks we nipped out, recovered the craft, pulled across, and made the faithful vessel fast to her proper moorings. Edward was anxious to wait and exchange courtesies and compliments with the disappointed farmer, when he should confront us on the opposite bank; but wiser counsels prevailed. It was possible that the piracy was not yet laid at our particular door: Ulysses, I reminded him, had reason to regret a similar act of bravado, and--were he here--would certainly advise a timely retreat. Edward held but a low opinion of me as a counsellor; but he had a very solid respect for Ulysses.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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, 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 advent.i.tious 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 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 Wess.e.x. 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 s.p.a.ces 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 gra.s.s, I devoted myself to the pa.s.sionate absorbing of every detail. At the end of five minutes there was not a b.u.t.ton on him that I could not have pa.s.sed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: '"_You haven't been to Rome, have you?_"']

After another five minutes or so had pa.s.sed, 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 b.a.l.l.s--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!'