Afoot in England: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Walking and Cycling

We know that there cannot be progression without
retrogression, or gain with no corresponding loss; and often
on my wheel, when flying along the roads at a reckless rate of
very nearly nine miles an hour, I have regretted that time of
limitations, galling to me then, when I was compelled to go on
foot. I am a walker still, but with other means of getting
about I do not feel so native to the earth as formerly. That
is a loss. Yet a poorer walker it would have been hard to
find, and on even my most prolonged wanderings the end of each
day usually brought extreme fatigue. This, too, although my
only companion was slow--slower than the poor proverbial snail
or tortoise--and I would leave her half a mile or so behind to
force my way through unkept hedges, climb hills, and explore
woods and thickets to converse with every bird and shy little
beast and scaly creature I could discover. But mark what
follows. In the late afternoon I would be back in the road or
footpath, satisfied to go slow, then slower still, until--the
snail in woman shape would be obliged to slacken her pace to
keep me company, and even to stand still at intervals to give
me needful rest.

But there were compensations, and one, perhaps the best of
all, was that this method of seeing the country made us more
intimate with the people we met and stayed with. They were
mostly poor people, cottagers in small remote villages; and
we, too, were poor, often footsore, in need of their
ministrations, and nearer to them on that account than if we
had travelled in a more comfortable way. I can recall a
hundred little adventures we met with during those wanderings,
when we walked day after day, without map or guide-book as our
custom was, not knowing where the evening would find us, but
always confident that the people to whom it would fall in the
end to shelter us would prove interesting to know and would
show us a kindness that money could not pay for. Of these
hundred little incidents let me relate one.

It was near the end of a long summer day when we arrived at a
small hamlet of about a dozen cottages on the edge of an
extensive wood--a forest it is called; and, coming to it, we
said that here we must stay, even if we had to spend the night
sitting in a porch. The men and women we talked to all
assured us that they did not know of anyone who could take us
in, but there was Mr. Brownjohn, who kept the shop, and was
the right person to apply to. Accordingly we went to the
little general shop and heard that Mr. Brownjohn was not at
home. His housekeeper, a fat, dark, voluble woman with
prominent black eyes, who minded the shop in the master's
absence, told us that Mr. Brownjohn had gone to a neighbouring
farm-house on important business, but was expected back
shortly. We waited, and by and by he returned, a shabbily
dressed, weak-looking little old man, with pale blue eyes and
thin yellowish white hair. He could not put us up, he said,
he had no room in his cottage; there was nothing for us but to
go on to the next place, a village three miles distant, on the
chance of finding a bed there. We assured him that we could
go no further, and after revolving the matter a while longer
he again said that we could not stay, as there was not a room
to be had in the place since poor Mrs. Flowerdew had her
trouble. She had a spare room and used to take in a lodger
occasionally, and a good handy woman she was too; but now--no,
Mrs. Flowerdew could not take us in. We questioned him, and
he said that no one had died there and there had been no
illness. They were all quite well at Mrs. Flowerdew's; the
trouble was of another kind. There was no more to be said
about it.

As nothing further could be got out of him we went in search
of Mrs. Flowerdew herself, and found her in a pretty
vine-clad cottage. She was a young woman, very poorly
dressed, with a pleasing but careworn face, and she had four
small, bright, healthy, happy-faced children. They were all
grouped round her as she stood in the doorway to speak to us,
and they too were poorly dressed and poorly shod. When we
told our tale she appeared ready to burst into tears. Oh, how
unfortunate it was that she could not take us in! It would
have made her so happy, and the few shillings would have been
such a blessing! But what could she do now--the landlord's
agent had put in a distress and carried off and sold all her
best things. Every stick out of her nice spare room had been
taken from them! Oh, it was cruel!

As we wished to hear more she told us the whole story. They
had got behindhand with the rent, but that had often been the
case, only this time it happened that the agent wanted a
cottage for a person he wished to befriend, and so gave them
notice to quit. But her husband was a high-spirited man and
determined to stick to his rights, so he informed the agent
that he refused to move until he received compensation for his
improvements.

Questioned about these improvements, she led us through to the
back to show us the ground, about half an acre in extent, part
of which was used as a paddock for the donkey, and on the
other part there were about a dozen rather sickly-looking
young fruit trees. Her husband, she said, had planted the
orchard and kept the fence of the paddock in order, and they
refused to compensate him! Then she took us up to the spare
room, empty of furniture, the floor thick with dust. The bed,
table, chairs, washhandstand, toilet service--the things she
had been so long struggling to get together, saving her money
for months and months, and making so many journeys to the town
to buy--all, all he had taken away and sold for almost
nothing!

Then, actually with tears in her eyes, she said that now we
knew why she couldn't take us in--why she had to seem so
unkind.

But we are going to stay, we told her. It was a very good
room; she could surely get a few things to put in it, and in
the meantime we would go and forage for provisions to last us
till Monday.

It is odd to find how easy it is to get what one wants by
simply taking it! At first she was amazed at our decision,
then she was delighted and said she would go out to her
neighbours and try to borrow all that was wanted in the way of
furniture and bedding. Then we returned to Mr. Brownjohn's to
buy bread, bacon, and groceries, and he in turn sent us to Mr.
Marling for vegetables. Mr. Marling heard us, and soberly
taking up a spade and other implements led us out to his
garden and dug us a mess of potatoes while we waited. In the
meantime good Mrs. Flowerdew had not been idle, and we formed
the idea that her neighbours must have been her debtors for
unnumbered little kindnesses, so eager did they now appear to
do her a good turn. Out of one cottage a woman was seen
coming burdened with a big roll of bedding; from others
children issued bearing cane chairs, basin and ewer, and so
on, and when we next looked into our room we found it swept
and scrubbed, mats on the floor, and quite comfortably
furnished.

After our meal in the small parlour, which had been given up
to us, the family having migrated into the kitchen, we sat for
an hour by the open window looking out on the dim forest and
saw the moon rise--a great golden globe above the trees--and
listened to the reeling of the nightjars. So many were the
birds, reeling on all sides, at various distances, that the
evening air seemed full of their sounds, far and near, like
many low, tremulous, sustained notes blown on reeds, rising
and falling, overlapping and mingling. And presently from
the bushes close by, just beyond the weedy, forlorn little
"orchard," sounded the rich, full, throbbing prelude to the
nightingale's song, and that powerful melody that in its
purity and brilliance invariably strikes us with surprise
seemed to shine out, as it were, against the background of
that diffused, mysterious purring of the nightjars, even as
the golden disc of the moon shone against and above the
darkening skies and dusky woods.

And as we sat there, gazing and listening, a human voice
came out of the night--a call prolonged and modulated like
the coo-ee of the Australian bush, far off and faint; but
the children in the kitchen heard it at the same time, for
they too had been listening, and instantly went mad with
excitement.

"Father!" they all screamed together. "Father's coming!" and
out they rushed and away they fled down the darkening road,
exerting their full voices in shrill answering cries.

We were anxious to see this unfortunate man, who was yet happy
in a loving family. He had gone early in the morning in his
donkey-cart to the little market town, fourteen miles away, to
get the few necessaries they could afford to buy. Doubtless
they would be very few. We had not long to wait, as the white
donkey that drew the cart had put on a tremendous spurt at the
end, notwithstanding that the four youngsters had climbed in
to add to his burden. But what was our surprise to behold in
the charioteer a tall, gaunt, grey-faced old man with long
white hair and beard! He must have been seventy, that old man
with a young wife and four happy bright-eyed little children!

We could understand it better when he finally settled down in
his corner in the kitchen and began to relate the events of
the day, addressing his poor little wife, now busy darning
or patching an old garment, while the children, clustered
at his knee, listened as to a fairy tale. Certainly this
white-haired man had not grown old in mind; he was keenly
interested in all he saw and heard, and he had seen and heard
much in the little market town that day. Cattle and pigs and
sheep and shepherds and sheepdogs; farmers, shopkeepers,
dealers, publicans, tramps, and gentlefolks in carriages and
on horseback; shops, too, with beautiful new things in the
windows; millinery, agricultural implements, flowers and fruit
and vegetables; toys and books and sweeties of all colours.
And the people he had met on the road and at market, and what
they had said to him about the weather and their business and
the prospects of the year, how their wives and children were,
and the clever jokes they had made, and his own jokes, which
were the cleverest of all. If he had just returned from
Central Africa or from Thibet he could not have had more to
tell them nor told it with greater zest.

We went to our room, but until the small hours the wind of the
old traveller's talk could still be heard at intervals from
the kitchen, mingled with occasional shrill explosions of
laughter from the listening children.

It happened that on the following day, spent in idling in the
forest and about the hamlet, conversing with the cottagers, we
were told that our old man was a bit of a humbug; that he was
a great talker, with a hundred schemes for the improvement
of his fortunes, and, incidently, for the benefit of his
neighbours and the world at large; but nothing came of it all
and he was now fast sinking into the lowest depths of poverty.
Yet who would blame him? 'Tis the nature of the gorse to be
"unprofitably gay." All that, however, is a question for the
moralist; the point now is that in walking, even in that poor
way, when, on account of physical weakness, it was often a
pain and weariness, there are alleviations which may be more
to us than positive pleasures, and scenes to delight the eye
that are missed by the wheelman in his haste, or but dimly
seen or vaguely surmised in passing--green refreshing nooks
and crystal streamlets, and shadowy woodland depths with
glimpses of a blue sky beyond--all in the wilderness of the
human heart.

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