Markyate Street, as it is how, is a wayside village, with a number of more or less decayed coaching and drovers’ and waggoners’ inns in its narrow street. The lovely old mansion of Markyate Cell, beyond, standing removed from the dusty road, in its beautiful park, owes its name to the spot having once been the hermit’s cell of one Roger, a monk of St. Albans, who, returning from pious pilgrimage to Jerusalem, was confronted by three angels, who there and then laid the vocation of hermit upon him, and conducted him to this spot, where he lived ever after: not altogether happy, for he suffered constant persecution from the Devil, who, according to Roger’s own account, tried once to drown him, and once set light to his hood. Had he ceased praying, there can be no doubt the worst would have befallen him; but he continued, unmoved, under these most alarming circumstances, and the Enemy was foiled.

After a while in this solitude, a “holy virgin,” Christina by name, came from Huntingdon and settled near by the equally holy Roger, who afforded her religious instruction, until he was called away from this vale of tears, when his body was laid in St. Albans Abbey. Christina established the Benedictine Convent of Markyate Cell, and became first Prioress of it in 1145. The mansion that now stands on the site in the wooded park is a veritable dream of peace and beauty; but there are hiding-holes in it, which sufficiently prove, if proof were wanted, that not always was peace and security the dominant note.

At one mile before Dunstable we leave Hertfordshire and enter Bedfordshire. It was a standing joke with all the coach-guards to ask their passengers “What comes after Herts?” and to answer, before their victims had time to reply, “Beds, if the Herts are serious enough.” Fortunately, even the weakest jokes that would be anæmic enough by the fireside seem quite robust in the fresh air; and the tedium of a long journey was such that even this wretched specimen was not usually resented.

Dunstable’s long and very broad chief street was until quite recently a pleasant gravelled stretch of road, but since fast motor-cars have come in crowds upon the highway, the townsfolk, in an attempt to save themselves from the dust they raise, have been obliged to resort to the expedient of treating the thoroughfare with a tarry preparation; with the result that the dust nuisance has not been thoroughly abolished, and instead of the old, cleanly-looking surface there is an ugly, coaly-looking way, smelling abominably.

Of Dunstable, or “Dunstaple” as it was formerly written, you may read more fully in the Holyhead Road; but attention may here be drawn to the old seal of the town, in which one of the once favourite punning allusions is found: here in a double-barrelled form, the representation of a horseshoe standing both for the mythical stable of the legendary robber, Dun, and for a staple, or hasp.

HOCKLIFFE

And so at last, through Dunstable town and out by the deep cutting that carries the road on the level, through the chalk downs, we come to Hockliffe, where the Holyhead Road goes off by itself, straight ahead, and the Manchester and Glasgow Road turns sharply to the right, continuing henceforward an independent course.

To compare small things with greater, Hockliffe was to the coaches to and from the north-west of England very much what Rugby Junction is now. Onward swept the coaches for Coventry, Birmingham, and Holyhead, while the traffic for Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow bore away to Woburn.

XVI

Turning suddenly from the Holyhead Road at this not very conspicuous corner, the telegraph-poles that have hitherto made so brave a show are missed, and the Manchester Road, for lack of them, seems of less than the first-class importance it really owns. Solitary runs the road for some miles, the sequence of trees and well-plashed quick-set hedges of this well-cared-for district varied only by the companionable signposts bearing the quaint or sonorous names of places on either side: places to which you do not want to go, and of which you have probably never before heard: but you like the information all the same. For one thing, they are earnest of the fact that the country really is inhabited: which the emptiness of the road would lead one to doubt. You speculate idly as to what manner of place “Simpson” may be: “Eaton Bray” is alluring, “Ellesborough” attractive; but it is still over 360 miles to Glasgow, and the invitation into the byways is resisted.