Seven English Cities

by William Dean Howells

I

At an English station you are either overwhelmed with transportation, or you are without any except such as you were born with, and at the station for Marston Moor I asked for a fly in vain. But it was a most walkable afternoon, and the pleasant road into the region which the station-master indicated as that I was seeking invited the foot by its level stretch, sometimes under wayside trees, but mostly between open fields, newly reaped and still yellow with their stubble, or green with the rowen clover. Sometimes it ran straight and sometimes it curved, but it led so rarely near any human habitation that one would rather not have met any tramps beside one’s self on it. Presently I overtook one, a gentle old farm-wife, a withered blonde, whom I helped with the bundles she bore in either hand, in the hope that she could tell me whether I was near Marston Moor or not. But she could tell me only, what may have been of higher human interest, that her husband had the grass farm of a hundred and fifty acres, which we were coming to, for seventy-five pounds a year; and they had their own cattle, sheep, and horses, and were well content with themselves. She excused herself for not knowing more than vaguely of the battle-field, as not having been many years in the neighborhood; and being now come to a gate in the fields, she thanked me and took her way up a grassy path to the pleasant farmhouse I saw in the distance.

It must have been about this time that it rained, having shone long enough for English weather, and it hardly held up before I was overtaken by a friendly youth on a bicycle, whom I stayed with the question uppermost in my mind. He promptly got off his wheel to grapple with the problem. He was a comely young fellow, an artisan of some sort from a neighboring town, and he knew the country well, but he did not know where my lost battle-field was. He was sure that it was near by: but he was sure there was no monument to mark the spot. Then we parted friends, with many polite expressions, and he rode on and I walked on.

For a mile and more I met no other wayfarer, and as I felt that it was time to ask for Marston Moor again, I was very glad to be overtaken by a gentleman driving in a dog-cart, with his pretty young daughter on the wide seat with him. He halted at sight of the elderly pilgrim, and hospitably asked if he could not give him a lift, alleging that there was plenty of room. He was interested in my search, which he was not able definitely to promote, but he believed that if I would drive with him to his place I could find the battle-field, and, anyhow, I could get a trap back from the The Sun. I pleaded the heat I was in from walking, and the danger for an old fellow of taking cold in a drive through the cool air; and then, as old fellows do, we bantered each other about our ages, each claiming to be older than the other, and the kind, sweet young girl sat listening with that tolerance of youth for the triviality of age which is so charming. When he could do no more, he said he was sorry, and wished me luck, and drove on; and I being by this time tired with my three miles’ tramp, took advantage of a wayside farmhouse, the first in all the distance, and went in and asked for a cup of tea.

The farm-wife, who came in out of her back garden to answer my knock, pleaded regretfully that her fire was down; but she thought I could get tea at the next house; and she was very conversable about the battle-field. She did not know just where it was, but she was sure it was quite a mile farther on; and at that I gave up the hope of it along with the tea. This is partly the reader’s loss, for I have no doubt I could have been very graphic about it if I had found it; but as for Marston Moor, I feel pretty certain that if it ever existed it does not now. A moor, as I understand, implies a sort of wildness, but nothing could be more domestic than the peaceful fields between which I had come so far, and now easily found my way back to the station. Easily, I say, but there was one point where the road forked, though I was sure it had not forked before, and I felt myself confronted with some sort, any sort, of exciting adventure. By taking myself firmly in hand, and saying, “It was yonder to the left where I met my kind bicycler, and we vainly communed of my evanescent battle-field,” and so keeping on, I got safely to the station with nothing more romantic in my experience than a thrilling apprehension.