Coming to this pseudo-country we made another rule. When footpaths occur we have the option whether to take them or no. (In future, as I have observed, all footpaths will no doubt be de rigueur.) A footpath took us to Lower Morden and another footpath took us through much mud, to farms, to old houses with meadows in front of them, and fine trees with many angles. The path degenerated from a rolling series of cart ruts to a faint track along the margin of a field, and faded away at last into wormrun grass. A dreadful moment. Presently, spying round, we saw a faded notice on a board—No Footpath—but,
Man is man, and master of his fate,
and we made another rule.
In short we cut across the fields to a row of houses protected by fierce-looking barbed-wire entanglements. We got on to another footpath and the footpath became a road and the road became a grand drive. I think we got to Blenheim Road, and that this degenerated to a cart track, and we were led over fields to the West Barnes Road, where trams and busses were running and we saw scrawled in front of us in big white letters—“Eternity—In Heaven or Hell. Vote Now.” We voted. Somehow we got to Raynes Park, and were much pleased with the front garden of Carter’s Seed Establishment and the many flowerpots and the ice plants.
Next day we reflected that we had become enmeshed in a net of our own contrivance. Our little plan didn’t at all fit in with the arrangement of the district. Suburbia, with crocuses in bloom, got rather on our nerves. By many circumlocutions we returned to Wimbledon. We did not know the name of the place was Wimbledon, but when we discovered this melancholy fact we realized that we had blisters on our feet.
Another day we walked to Malden, where we bought an excellent chicken which we took home in time for supper. Then by Sycamore Grove we walked to Poplar Grove, and by Poplar Grove we walked to Lime Grove, and by Lime Grove to Elm Road, by Elm Road to Beech Grove. We took the option of a footpath and skidded from this region of trees to the main highway, where the fine Hampton Court electric cars speed their handsome way. We went straight into Kingston without any more beating about the bush. We should ordinarily have gone in by the open highroad, but an alley forestalled that conventionality, and we entered by a wee way which took us inside the house of the parish, and we saw all the children playing everywhere upon the floor. Rather slummy. We passed Milner Villas (built 1902), we passed The Victoria, The Six Bells, and The Three Tuns, passed the Kingston Grammar School, where the boys have scarlet caps, and the Bunyan Baptist Tabernacle where the pastor had the kenspeckle name of Isaac Stalberg. There was a strong smell of marmalade from St. James’ Works, and Kingston Station was puffing with locomotive steam. Night had spread its glamour over everything, and we walked by several slums down to The Jolly Brewers, along paved passages and in the purlieus of the gas works, by further passages where were no houses, to the sight of the greenish mud-colored river and the rusty coppery railway bridge. The old stone bridge of Kingston also stood beautifully in our view.
When we returned to Kingston there was a lonely but lovely walk along Thames side, seeking a bridge to give us a turning on the left, with sun and wind and rain, and ducks falling through the air with a ssh, and cunning swans sailing forward expecting food, and crying gulls. It was the towing path toward Teddington Lock. The riverside houses came down to the water with lawns and landing stages, terraces, gardens, formal beauties. The Thames is a fair stream; we have made it fair. Once it was otherwise, and England also—unnamed, unloved, wild, woody, marshy. Man has made it dear unto himself. In the ever freshening morning we stood on the bridge at Teddington and looked at the waters rolling over the dam, and the green park land and the gardens beyond.
We wondered very much how we should depart from the other bank of the river, what direction Fate would have us take. But we never could guess in advance. Generally we would say: “I believe to-day we shall land up somewhere in the neighborhood of this place or that,” but our prognostications were never justified. Thus, who would have expected that having passed through Teddington we should arrive at the other side of Kingston stone bridge and be called upon to return to our starting point!
We wandered through an area of large houses possessing a certain sort of pomp and gloom, happy in the summer, not so happy in the winter. And then an area of little Hope Cottages and May Villas. Somewhere in the neighborhood of Seymour Road and Lower Teddington Road we came to a highly disputable loop of roadway which betrayed us to the return over Kingston Bridge.
We felt highly annoyed when we saw this main plank which we were about to be forced to walk. I, with Machiavellian cunning, proposed to return to that fatal loop of roadway and reinterpret its bearing, and we stood on the triangular refuge in the middle of the roadway, and discussed the point hotly. This is distinctly not a walk on which to embark with one’s wife. It reveals points of difference. It brings out the hidden crookedness of character, confirms all obstinacies and predeterminations. It is possible to get more excited over a trivial turning (mark you, trivial, a place where three ways meet) than over the most portentous decision in real life. I imagine it is always so. In any case, we stood on the triangle at Kingston and argued the point. Two stout policemen of the cinema picture type stood over on the pavement, regarding us and nodding their heads together. “What do you think is their little game?” one was possibly saying to the other, and they must have viewed me with a considerable amount of suspicion when I returned to that loop and obtained a heretical reading of the truth to suit my purpose.