The Woodlanders

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.