The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should trace the
forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to
the south shore of England, would find himself during the latter half
of his journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands,
interspersed with apple-orchards. Here the trees, timber or
fruit-bearing, as the case may be, make the wayside hedges ragged by
their drip and shade, stretching over the road with easeful
horizontality, as if they found the unsubstantial air an adequate
support for their limbs. At one place, where a hill is crossed, the
largest of the woods shows itself bisected by the high-way, as the head
of thick hair is bisected by the white line of its parting. The spot
is lonely.
The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree
that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like
stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of
what is with what might be probably accounts for this. To step, for
instance, at the place under notice, from the hedge of the plantation
into the adjoining pale thoroughfare, and pause amid its emptiness for
a moment, was to exchange by the act of a single stride the simple
absence of human companionship for an incubus of the forlorn.
At this spot, on the lowering evening of a by-gone winter's day, there
stood a man who had entered upon the scene much in the aforesaid
manner. Alighting into the road from a stile hard by, he, though by no
means a "chosen vessel" for impressions, was temporarily influenced by
some such feeling of being suddenly more alone than before he had
emerged upon the highway.
It could be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress that
he did not belong to the country proper; and from his air, after a
while, that though there might be a sombre beauty in the scenery, music
in the breeze, and a wan procession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment
of this old turnpike-road, he was mainly puzzled about the way. The
dead men's work that had been expended in climbing that hill, the
blistered soles that had trodden it, and the tears that had wetted it,
were not his concern; for fate had given him no time for any but
practical things.
He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded the ground with his
walking-stick. A closer glance at his face corroborated the testimony
of his clothes. It was self-complacent, yet there was small apparent
ground for such complacence. Nothing irradiated it; to the eye of the
magician in character, if not to the ordinary observer, the expression
enthroned there was absolute submission to and belief in a little
assortment of forms and habitudes.