X
I
The greatest adventures in the lives of men will sometimes be embarked on very simply, and that was how Gian-Luca set out on his journey—taking no heed for the morrow. To please Maddalena he must carry a suitcase in which she had managed to pack some warm flannels, and his raincoat she had strapped to the side of the suitcase, adding thereby to its bulk. For the rest he would take nothing but what he stood up in, and this for a very good reason; he intended to tramp to his destination, wherever that might ultimately be. A great longing for freedom of movement possessed him; he wanted to be quite untrammeled; he would not be restricted by so much as a map, far less by timetables and trains. He felt blessedly vague regarding his plans, though he meant to reach Staines by the evening; after that his road should be left to fate.
“Some place must be waiting for me,” he thought, “some place is always waiting—”
His clothes were quite as vague as his plans; he was wearing what had first come to hand—an old tweed suit, some well-worn brown shoes, and a shabby grey Homburg hat. To all Maddalena’s protests he had answered firmly: “I can buy what I need on the journey”; so what could she do but put up a prayer that the fine warm weather would hold?
He wandered along New Oxford Street, carrying that tiresome suitcase, a ridiculous encumbrance for a very long walk; he must buy himself something more practical, a knapsack—but he felt rather tender towards the suitcase, thinking of Maddalena.
“Just for a little I will keep it,” he mused, filled with his gratitude towards her, and filled with a certain sense of guilt also; he had not told her that he meant to tramp: “I will let you know where I am when I get there,” he had said, allowing his wife to suppose that he meant to get there by train.
The first part of his journey was dull and uninspiring, Bayswater, Shepherd’s Bush, and then Chiswick High Road; mile upon dreary mile of London—he felt as though the city were stretching out its coils, trying to trip him, to impede him.
“It will not let me get out!” he muttered, gripping his suitcase more firmly.
But now he was passing Kew Bridge Station, and this reassured him a little; he paused and stood gazing towards the bridge, with his eyes filled with recollection.
“Such a very long time ago,” he was thinking; “It was all such a long time ago—”
Mario and Rosa, Berta and Geppe, and the little Gian-Luca with his hamper—the sudden blue and coolness of bluebells, a child who had pushed them roughly with his foot because they had made him unhappy, because for some inexplicable reason they had taken the comfort from his motto. A gallant motto it had been in its way, so simple, too:
“I have got myself—”
“Yes, but no one has really got himself, that is the trouble,” thought Gian-Luca. “Come on, avanti! There is not much time!” Mario limping with his bunion—“Come on, avanti! There is not much time!” and yet Mario was still at the Capo di Monte, and there he would remain unless Millo took pity and rescued the old lame mule—. Mario had never had time to admire things that lay right under his nose, such as a flowering magnolia tree, or prunias in blossom, or a patch of cool bluebells—he had only had time for enormous longings that had stretched to Land’s End and beyond. And supposing he should ultimately reach his Land’s End—why then he would still say: “Avanti! Come on, avanti! There is not much time, we have no time to look at the sea! …”
Gian-Luca began to walk forward again, and quite soon he had come to Brentford, a detestable place always smelling of gasworks, its streets always fouled by its grimy, black wharves and the grimy boots of its workers. Yet in Brentford it was that the first romance of his pilgrimage touched Gian-Luca; for a steep little hill led down to the water, and there on the water lay a battered old barge, and that barge with a blue swirl of smoke from its chimney was Romance—yes, even in Brentford. But just past the canal he saw a wonderful thing, a tiny orchard in blossom. In spite of the grime and the squalor, it was blooming—a brave little remnant of that army of orchards that must once have marched almost through Brentford itself, filling the air with their good scent of growth and the eye with their heavenly whiteness. Gian-Luca suddenly caught his breath, for a deep new craving was upon him—the craving to bless because of that orchard.
“Not God,” thought Gian-Luca, “for I have not yet found Him—” so his grateful heart blessed the orchard.
Hounslow he passed, and then Neals’ Corner, after which the tramlines ended. Sturdy quick-hedges began to guard fields, real fields that looked placid and consciously green in the pale April sunlight of the morning. Now he was coming to the open country, and meadows with streams and willows he came to, and a widening stream that spread as it rippled brown over last year’s leaves. A great number of birds were piping and singing—blackbirds and thrushes, with here and there a robin; many other birds also, whose songs were unfamiliar to this man for whom England had meant London.
He thought: “It is like a very kind garden where everything goes unmolested.” And he marveled at how little he knew this garden. “I must always have been too busy,” he mused, beginning to loiter a little.
He walked down a pathway that led to the stream, and, undoing his suitcase, he got out some food. Maddalena had included hard-boiled eggs in the menu: she had rolled them up carefully in a grey flannel shirtsleeve, and this made him laugh when he found them. But when he discovered what else she had done, his eyes grew pitiful and tender, for lavender sprigs had been laid among his flannels—two little bunches tied up with blue ribbon—and although his bread and butter had a lavender flavor, he consumed it gladly for her sake.
It was pleasant under the trees by the water, and he stayed there resting for quite a long time; and as he rested what should he hear but the first insistent call of the cuckoo, that strangely alluring, mysterious call to something that lies always just beyond.
Presently he got up and trudged on again, passing through Bedfont, and loitering once more to look at the church, with its tall clipped yew and its curious, squat wooden steeple. By now he was beginning to feel very tired indeed, and the suitcase grew heavier and heavier. Seeing him, one or two people wondered, for the stigma of the city was still upon him in the cut of his suit, in the lightness of his shoes, but above all, perhaps, in his pale, thin face that had lost its Italian sunburn. Footsore and weary, he trudged into Staines and stared dully about him for an inn. He must lodge very cheaply, having brought little money; every penny he had belonged to Maddalena. But he finally selected an inn quite at random, because he liked the look of its signboard—a friendly white lion with the face of a sheepdog.
And that was the end of the first day.
II
Next morning he bought a capacious knapsack with wide webbing straps for the shoulders. His suitcase he left with the landlord of the inn: “I will call for it on my way back,” he promised, not considering where that might lead him.
For that matter he did not know his way forward, but he took the road to Egham. He felt rested, he was stepping out quite briskly with his knapsack, and, after a little, Virginia Water was lying on his right, through the trees. Now he was passing small woods and parklands; there was bracken, too, with its questioning fronds like green marks of interrogation. The sun was turning the water to silver, as though it lay bathed in moonlight; but all these fair things were behind iron fences, and none of them seemed quite happy or free.
“I have not yet found what I need,” thought Gian-Luca, slowly shaking his head.
The road grew more thickly wooded beyond Virginia Water, and he fancied that the trees were tramping beside him—beech tree and ash tree, holly and chestnut; and their branches swept forward a little in the wind as though pointing the way to Gian-Luca.
“Where are you taking me to?” he asked them, and for answer the trees swept forward again.
All day he tramped on, forgetting his luncheon, and the trees never left him for long. Sometimes he would pass through a town or a village, but the trees would be waiting on the far side to meet him, while the gentle, green pastures with their gentle-eyed cattle would be drowsing beyond the trees. This was the day on which he saw his first lambs; quite new they were, and unbelievably clean. Being strong little lambs, they played a great deal, but without any sense of direction. On their stiff, hoop-stick legs they wore fluffy black gaiters; their faces were black, too, so the rest of their fleece seemed exceedingly white by contrast. After their babes walked the careful old ewes, nuzzling, pushing, calling. From time to time a lamb stopped abruptly, ducking its head for the comfort of its mother, and the ewe would stand patiently gazing into space while the lamb drank in life from her body.
How pleasant they were, these wide English meadows, happy with flocks and herds. The sky and the green grass belonged to their creatures, but Gian-Luca, remembering Lidia’s poor beasts, must turn his eyes away from these meadows, filled with a reminiscent pity.
Towards evening he came to a quiet inn standing at the end of a village, a low black-and-white building with timbers and gables; and because a huge elm tree guarded its entrance, he decided to stay there for the night. He ate his supper at a rough wooden table that stood just under the tree; he could hear the perpetual talking of leaves, and, whatever it was that they talked of, it soothed him, for their sibilant words sounded patient and hopeful.
And so ended his second day.
III
Gian-Luca fell in with a tramp the next morning who was going in his direction, a dusty fellow with a hole in his shoe, and the restless eyes and shuffling gait that belong to the Brothers of the Road. Gian-Luca himself looked scarcely less dusty, and he too was shuffling a little, for those who walk far must economize force—they very soon drop their goose-step. A two days’ growth was on Gian-Luca’s chin, for he had not troubled to shave.
“I will let my beard grow,” he had said to himself, and now it was obviously growing.
But this unkempt appearance did not deceive the tramp, who had taken in Gian-Luca’s clothes. “A toff,” thought the tramp, “and ’e’s tryin’ to look shabby. Lordy, ain’t people amazin’!”
“Good morning!” said Gian-Luca on a sudden impulse; “it looks like being a fine day.”
“Yus,” grunted the tramp noncommittally, and proceeded to scratch his head.
After that there was silence for several minutes while he eyed Gian-Luca with suspicion; he had certainly met this type before, he decided—swells, and loonies, and suchlike, doing the simple; they generally tried to find out all about you, then wrote a lot of rubbish to the papers.
“Are you going very far?” inquired Gian-Luca, breaking the awkward pause.
“Middlin’,” he was told, and again there was silence as they trudged along side by side.
“This road leads to Basingstoke, I think,” remarked Gian-Luca.
“ ’Ook comes fust,” growled his Brother.
“Oh, does it?” said Gian-Luca.
“Yus, it do,” snapped the tramp; “ain’t yer looked at the signposts? Don’t yer know where yer goin’?”
Gian-Luca smiled at him: “Well, no, not exactly, but every road must lead somewhere in the end.”
And now the tramp felt thoroughly suspicious: “I suppose yer’ve come walkin’ out ’ere for fun; yer one of them crack-brains wot wants ter live simple. Blimey! you try it! It ain’t so darned simple to live no’ow, to my way of thinkin’.” Then he added quickly: “Or maybe yer a writer, one of them as writes for the papers.”
But Gian-Luca informed him that he had once been a waiter, and at this his companion looked a little more friendly: “A waiter, was yer? That sounds all right ter me—so nice and ’andy to the food.”
“I suppose so. I have thrown up my job quite lately. I used to be at the Doric.”
“Gawd!” muttered the tramp, “that swell plyce in Piccadilly? Yer spoilt, that’s wot you are; some folks never knows their blessin’s, not till they’ve lost ’em.”
Gian-Luca examined the man’s face more closely, noticing the restless eyes. He said: “You would never tolerate four walls—”
“Now then, wotch’yer gettin’ at!” scowled the tramp, glancing at Gian-Luca with annoyance.
At Hook the tramp bethought him of food, and he paused beside a shop window. The window was full of cold meats and pork pies, interlarded with rock cakes and apples.
But the tramp shook his head: “No, thanks,” he remarked. “I ain’t got the price of the Doric terdye, nor yet of the Berkeley neither—”
“You may choose!” said Gian-Luca.
“Go on!” said the tramp.
“You may choose; I mean it,” laughed Gian-Luca.
The tramp chose a couple of large pork pies and a goodly portion of beef. Gian-Luca chose bread and cheese and some apples.
“Well, I never!” scoffed his companion.
Farther on down the street Gian-Luca bought beer, then they hurried along through the town.
“Come on!” urged the tramp. “I knows a nice spot fer a picnic!” and he grinned with amusement.
Out beyond the town they came to a meadow; a large board was affixed to its gate: “Trespassers will be prosecuted,” read the board, but the tramp wormed his way through a gap in the hedge, and after him went Gian-Luca.
The tramp was soon mellow with pork pies and beer, his eyes grew more steady and friendly; and now he was talking of the life of the road as though he were talking to a Brother. Gian-Luca heard about the hard law of trespass, and how it might best be evaded; he learnt how a man could find comfort at night, in what type of barn it was safe to take refuge, what formation of hayrick provided good shelter, what species of watchdog was most to be feared, and what words were most likely to calm him. All these things he learnt and a great deal besides, including the right houses to beg at, for mystical signs would be found on gateposts, chalked there by considerate Brethren in passing; some were danger signals, some the other way round; every tramp understood these signals. Then just as his guest grew most eloquent down came a sharp April shower; Gian-Luca completely forgot his raincoat, as his wife might have guessed that he would do. When the shower had passed over, the tramp collected sticks from the sheltered side of the hedge, and choosing a nicely secluded corner, he proceeded to light a fire.
“Got to be careful of fires,” he said gravely; “getch yer into trouble, they does. Alwers let yer smoke blow away from the ’igh road, that is if yer can—see, mate?”
But Gian-Luca was not attending to the words; he was watching the creating of the fire from three paper bags, and a few dryish sticks collected on the lee-side of the hedge. There in that rain-soaked English meadow the prehistoric ritual was performed—the ageless ritual of the calling of fire to the help and service of man. Like a priest of old, the tramp stretched forth his hands in a gesture of command and benediction, and the flames leapt up to the summons of those hands.
“Kind of attrac’s it, flesh do,” he explained, looking up at Gian-Luca.
Then they crouched beside the fire and let themselves steam, glad enough of the warmth and comfort; and the clouds broke apart, leaving rifts of blue sky, while the fire did its best to dry them.
Presently they sidled out through the hedge, having carefully stamped on the glowing ashes, and they walked as far as Basingstoke together, where the tramp said goodbye to Gian-Luca. He was going to pick up some work at a farm that lay two miles away down a lane.
“Just enough to keep me goin’ fer a bit, so I’ll ’ave to wish yer good afternoon, mister.” He had suddenly grown suspicious again, too suspicious to call this man “mate.”
Gian-Luca said: “If I keep to the high road, where shall I come to in the end?”
The tramp considered: “If yer keeps right on this way, yer’ll be bound to come to the Noo Forest.”
“The trees were right, then,” murmured Gian-Luca; “I felt that they were trying to lead me—”
“Gawd!” laughed the tramp, “you are balmy, aren’t yer? Well, goodbye, mister, and thank yer.”
Gian-Luca strode forward along the road, while the afternoon passed and the shadows lengthened; but still he strode forward, not pausing to rest, for his thoughts ran before him to the forest. At King’s Watney, however, he must stay the night, for his feet were aching and swollen; indeed, he was aching a little all over, having tramped that day for twenty-five miles. Securing a room at the Horse and Ploughman, he gingerly took off his shoes and socks, only to discover that his heels were both blistered and the skin of his feet very tender. He bathed them, remembering old Fabio in the process. Fabio would have recommended rubbing with soap, and since he did not know what else to do, Gian-Luca tried his prescription. He finally rolled into bed with a sigh, and was lying between sleeping and waking; then his mind saw a picture quite clearly in the darkness, a thing that had not happened for years. There were wide, placid spaces and running water; but something more lovely than this he saw—a quiet and very beautiful gloom, green from the leaves that made it.
“They have come to me again, my pictures,” he murmured.
And that was the end of the third day.
IV
Gian-Luca was up betimes the next morning, and his feet—thanks perhaps to Fabio’s prescription—were certainly much less painful. In Winchester he stopped to buy provisions, which he stuffed away in his knapsack; then he started to tramp again in good earnest, lured on by the thought of the forest. He had never been in this part of the country, and he noticed many pleasant things about it; all the cottages, for instance, were heavily thatched, and one cottage that he passed had a queer little window shaped like an eye, just under its hair, which gave it an inquisitive appearance. The walls, too, were thatched, the thatch sitting astride them, jauntily riding their tops.
The road became increasingly lovely; it was bordered once more with trees. “They look strong and proud and happy!” thought Gian-Luca, and he wondered if they felt the nearness of the forest, and if that was what made them look so happy.
He came to the sleepy town of Romsey, which he left by way of the old stone bridge that spans the River Test; the water was chuckling softly to itself, swollen by April rains. At the top of a steep hill he sat down to rest, eating his food by the roadside. A gipsy caravan crawled up towards him, and its inmates nodded and smiled at Gian-Luca; they had very bright eyes, like Nerone’s skylarks, only their eyes looked free. Smoke was coming from the chimney of their small house on wheels; no doubt they were cooking their breakfast. A whiff of fried bacon reached Gian-Luca, and two lean lurcher dogs dashed backwards and forwards, barking in anticipation.
“Where are you going to?” shouted Gian-Luca.
And the driver waved a brown hand: “To the forest,” he shouted loudly in his turn, in order to be heard above the barking.
Gian-Luca lay back and smiled in the sunshine, repeating the happy words; then he thought: “They will not have it all to themselves, for Gian-Luca is going there too.”
He got up quickly and shouldered his knapsack, following in the wake of the gipsies. The aspect of the country was very subtly changing, though the change was not easy to define. The trees grew no thicker, nor were there more of them, yet the whole landscape seemed suggestive of trees—for the strange, mysterious spirit of the forest hung over it like a spell. Past the village of Ower, plantations of young firs stood ankle deep in heather that was waiting to purple; and just about here Gian-Luca first saw the little wild New Forest ponies.
Brothers of the Road were passing him now, a tattered and feckless army; aye, and Sisters of the Road, looking even more tattered—one sallow-faced Sister held an infant to her breast, suckling it as she walked. Some of the Brethren pushed improvised handcarts—sugar-boxes lashed to old perambulator wheels—and these vehicles contained a variety of oddments, from babies to worn boots and rusty tin cans; while in one lay a bundle of decomposing rags upon which sat a blear-eyed puppy. Here and there a Brother, more fearless than his mates, had kindled a fire by the roadside.
“He will surely get into trouble,” thought Gian-Luca, remembering the warning of his tramp.
But such fires smelt pleasantly of dry leaves and pine wood, and their soft, smoky glow was alluring, so Gian-Luca must toss one old sinner a shilling, feeling like an outlaw himself.
Cadnam! The name of an unimportant village, having neither interest nor beauty, yet for those who pass through it in search of dreams the name of a deeply-enchanted gateway, for just beyond lies the softly-breathing forest—still dreaming after eight hundred years.
Gian-Luca went through that enchanted gateway, and even as he did so, it seemed to close behind him, and he looked at the forest, and the forest looked back out of drowsy, thoughtful green eyes. The road still led forward so Gian-Luca still followed, curbing his eagerness, tasting anticipation like a lover on the eve of ultimate fulfilment. But when he had passed the little town of Lyndhurst the greenness clamored more loudly; he could hear that clamor in the beating of his heart, in the strong, anxious beating of his pulses. The damp, pure smell of the earth in spring travail—the moss smell, the leaf smell—laid hold on his senses; while those drowsy, thoughtful green eyes of the forest followed him down the high road.
Then suddenly Gian-Luca could resist it no longer, and he turned and plunged into the forest, stumbling against the trees in his haste to thrust farther and farther inward. Now he had left the road far behind him and had come to a wide green glade. The glade was full of the singing of birds, the grass was dappled with sunshine and flowers—clumps of anemones. He sat down under a gracious beech tree, pressing his cheek against its smooth bark; he was tired, and he suddenly felt rather drowsy, sitting there under the beech tree. He stretched his long legs with a sigh of contentment, then his head nodded forward on his breast—that night Gian-Luca slept out in the forest.
And that was the end of the fourth day.