The Path to Rome Part 16

The train rolled on. I noticed Lombardy out of the windows. It is flat. I listened to the talk of the crowded peasants in the train. I did not understand it. I twice leaned out to see if Milan were not standing up before me out of the plain, but I saw nothing. Then I fell asleep, and when I woke suddenly it was because we were in the terminus of that n.o.ble great town, which I then set out to traverse in search of my necessary money and sustenance. It was yet but early in the afternoon.

What a magnificent city is Milan! The great houses are all of stone, and stand regular and in order, along wide straight streets. There are swift cars, drawn by electricity, for such as can afford them. Men are brisk and alert even in the summer heats, and there are shops of a very good kind, though a trifle showy. There are many newspapers to help the Milanese to be better men and to cultivate charity and humility; there are banks full of paper money; there are soldiers, good pavements, and all that man requires to fulfil him, soul and body; cafes, arcades, mutoscopes, and every sign of the perfect state.

And the whole centres in a splendid open square, in the midst of which is the cathedral, which is justly the most renowned in the world.

My pilgrimage is to Rome, my business is with lonely places, hills, and the recollection of the spirit. It would be waste to describe at length this mighty capital. The mists and the woods, the snows and the interminable way, had left me ill-suited for the place, and I was ashamed. I sat outside a cafe, opposite the cathedral, watching its pinnacles of light; but I was ashamed. Perhaps I did the master a hurt by sitting there in his fine great cafe, unkempt, in such clothes, like a tramp; but he was courteous in spite of his riches, and I ordered a very expensive drink for him also, in order to make amends.

I showed him my sketches, and told him of my adventures in French, and he was kind enough to sit opposite me, and to take that drink with me.

He talked French quite easily, as it seems do all such men in the princ.i.p.al towns of north Italy. Still, the broad day shamed me, and only when darkness came did I feel at ease.

I wandered in the streets till I saw a small eating shop, and there I took a good meal. But when one is living the life of the poor, one sees how hard are the great cities. Everything was dearer, and worse, than in the simple countrysides. The innkeeper and his wife were kindly, but their eyes showed that they had often to suspect men. They gave me a bed, but it was a franc and more, and I had to pay before going upstairs to it. The walls were mildewed, the place ramshackle and evil, the rickety bed not clean, the door broken and warped, and that night I was oppressed with the vision of poverty. Dirt and clamour and inhuman conditions surrounded me. Yet the people meant well.

With the first light I got up quietly, glad to find the street again and the air. I stood in the crypt of the cathedral to hear the Ambrosian Ma.s.s, and it was (as I had expected) like any other, save for a kind of second _lavabo_ before the Elevation. To read the distorted stupidity of the north one might have imagined that in the Ambrosian ritual the priest put a _non_ before the _credo,_ and _nec's_ at each clause of it, and renounced his baptismal vows at the _kyrie;_ but the Milanese are Catholics like any others, and the northern historians are either liars or ignorant men. And I know three that are both together.

Then I set out down the long street that leads south out of Milan, and was soon in the dull and sordid suburb of the Piacenzan way. The sky was grey, the air chilly, and in a little while--alas!--it rained.

Lombardy is an alluvial plain.

That is the pretty way of putting it. The truth is more vivid if you say that Lombardy is as flat as a marsh, and that it is made up of mud. Of course this mud dries when the sun s.h.i.+nes on it, but mud it is and mud it will remain; and that day, as the rain began falling, mud it rapidly revealed itself to be; and the more did it seem to be mud when one saw how the moistening soil showed cracks from the last day's heat.

Lombardy has no forests, but any amount of groups of trees; moreover (what is very remarkable), it is all cultivated in fields more or less square. These fields have ditches round them, full of mud and water running slowly, and some of them are themselves under water in order to cultivate rice. All these fields have a few trees bordering them, apart from the standing clumps; but these trees are not very high.

There are no open views in Lombardy, and Lombardy is all the same.

Irregular large farmsteads stand at random all up and down the country; no square mile of Lombardy is empty. There are many, many little villages; many straggling small towns about seven to eight miles apart, and a great number of large towns from thirty to fifty miles apart. Indeed, this very road to Piacenza, which the rain now covered with a veil of despair, was among the longest stretches between any two large towns, although it was less than fifty miles.

On the map, before coming to this desolate place, there seemed a straighter and a better way to Rome than this great road. There is a river called the Lambro, which comes east of Milan and cuts the Piacenzan road at a place called Melegnano. It seemed to lead straight down to a point on the Po, a little above Piacenza. This stream one could follow (so it seemed), and when it joined the Po get a boat or ferry, and see on the other side the famous Trebbia, where Hannibal conquered and Joubert fell, and so make straight on for the Apennine.

Since it is always said in books that Lombardy is a furnace in summer, and that whole great armies have died of the heat there, this river bank would make a fine refuge. Clear and delicious water, more limpid than gla.s.s, would reflect and echo the restless poplars, and would make tolerable or even pleasing the excessive summer. Not so. It was a northern mind judging by northern things that came to this conclusion.

There is not in all Lombardy a clear stream, but every river and brook is rolling mud. In the rain, not heat, but a damp and penetrating chill was the danger. There is no walking on the banks of the rivers; they are cliffs of crumbling soil, jumbled anyhow.

Man may, as Pinkerton (Sir Jonas Pinkerton) writes, be master of his fate, but he has a precious poor servant. It is easier to command a lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for half-an-hour.

Nevertheless, though it was apparent that I should have to follow the main road for a while, I determined to make at last to the right of it, and to pa.s.s through a place called 'Old Lodi', for I reasoned thus: 'Lodi is the famous town. How much more interesting must Old Lodi be which is the mothertown of Lodi?' Also, Old Lodi brought me back again on the straight line to Rome, and I foolishly thought it might be possible to hear there of some straight path down the Lambro (for that river still possessed me somewhat).

Therefore, after hours and hours of trudging miserably along the wide highway in the wretched and searching rain, after splas.h.i.+ng through tortuous Melegnano, and not even stopping to wonder if it was the place of the battle, after noting in despair the impossible Lambro, I came, caring for nothing, to the place where a secondary road branches off to the right over a level crossing and makes for Lodi Vecchio.

It was not nearly midday, but I had walked perhaps fifteen miles, and had only rested once in a miserable Trattoria. In less than three miles I came to that unkempt and lengthy village, founded upon dirt and living in misery, and through the quiet, cold, persistent rain I splashed up the main street. I pa.s.sed wretched, s.h.i.+vering dogs and mournful fowls that took a poor refuge against walls; pa.s.sed a sad horse that hung its head in the wet and stood waiting for a master, till at last I reached the open square where the church stood, then I knew that I had seen all Old Lodi had to offer me. So, going into an eating-house, or inn, opposite the church, I found a girl and her mother serving, and I saluted them, but there was no fire, and my heart sank to the level of that room, which was, I am sure, no more than fifty-four degrees.

Why should the less gracious part of a pilgrimage be specially remembered? In life were remember joy best--that is what makes us sad by contrast; pain somewhat, especially if it is acute; but dulness never. And a book--which has it in its own power to choose and to emphasize--has no business to record dulness. What did I at Lodi Vecchio? I ate; I dried my clothes before a tepid stove in a kitchen.

I tried to make myself understood by the girl and her mother. I sat at a window and drew the ugly church on principle. Oh, the vile sketch!

Worthy of that Lombard plain, which they had told me was so full of wonderful things. I gave up all hope of by-roads, and I determined to push back obliquely to the highway again--obliquely in order to save time! Nepios!

These 'by-roads' of the map turned out in real life to be all manner of abominable tracks. Some few were metalled, some were cart-ruts merely, some were open lanes of rank gra.s.s; and along most there went a horrible ditch, and in many fields the standing water proclaimed desolation. IN so far as I can be said to have had a way at all, I lost it. I could not ask my way because my only ultimate goal was Piacenza, and that was far off. I did not know the name of any place between. Two or three groups of houses I pa.s.sed, and sometimes church towers glimmered through the rain. I pa.s.sed a larger and wider road than the rest, but obviously not my road; I pressed on and pa.s.sed another; and by this time, having ploughed up Lombardy for some four hours, I was utterly lost. I no longer felt the north, and, for all I knew, I might be going backwards. The only certain thing was that I was somewhere in the belt between the highroad and the Lambro, and that was little enough to know at the close of such a day. Grown desperate, I clamoured within my mind for a miracle; and it was not long before I saw a little bent man sitting on a crazy cart and going ahead of me at a pace much slower than a walk--the pace of a horse crawling. I caught him up, and, doubting much whether he would understand a word, I said to him repeatedly--

_'La granda via? La via a Piacenza?'_

He shook his head as though to indicate that this filthy lane was not the road. Just as I had despaired of learning anything, he pointed with his arm away to the right, perpendicularly to the road we were on, and nodded. He moved his hand up and down. I had been going north!

On getting this sign I did not wait for a cross road, but jumped the little ditch and pushed through long gra.s.s, across further ditches, along the side of patches of growing corn, heedless of the huge weight on my boots and of the oozing ground, till I saw against the rainy sky a line of telegraph poles. For the first time since they were made the sight of them gave a man joy. There was a long stagnant pond full of reeds between me and the railroad; but, as I outflanked it, I came upon a road that crossed the railway at a level and led me into the great Piacenzan way. Almost immediately appeared a village. It was a hole called Secugnano, and there I entered a house where a bush hanging above the door promised entertainment, and an old hobbling woman gave me food and drink and a bed. The night had fallen, and upon the roof above me I could hear the steady rain.

The next morning--Heaven preserve the world from evil!--it was still raining.

LECTOR. It does not seem to me that this part of your book is very entertaining.

AUCTOR. I know that; but what am I to do?

LECTOR. Why, what was the next point in the pilgrimage that was even tolerably noteworthy?

AUCTOR. I suppose the Bridge of Boats.

LECTOR. And how far on was that?

AUCTOR. About fourteen miles, more or less... I pa.s.sed through a town with a name as long as my arm, and I suppose the Bridge of Boats must have been nine miles on after that.

LECTOR. And it rained all the time, and there was mud?

AUCTOR. Precisely.

LECTOR. Well, then, let us skip it and tell stories.

AUCTOR. With all my heart. And since you are such a good judge of literary poignancy, do you begin.

LECTOR. I will, and I draw my inspiration from your style.

Once upon a time there was a man who was born in Croydon, and whose name was Charles Amieson Blake. He went to Rugby at twelve and left it at seventeen. He fell in love twice and then went to Cambridge till he was twenty-three. Having left Cambridge he fell in love more mildly, and was put by his father into a government office, where he began at _180_ pounds a year. At thirty-five he was earning 500 pounds a year, and perquisites made 750 pounds a year. He met a pleasant lady and fell in love quite a little compared with the other times. She had 250 pounds a year. That made _1000_ pounds a year. They married and had three children--Richard, Amy, and Cornelia. He rose to a high government position, was knighted, retired at sixty-three, and died at sixty-seven. He is buried at Kensal Green...

AUCTOR. Thank you, Lector, that is a very good story. It is simple and full of plain human touches. You know how to deal with the facts of everyday life... It requires a master-hand. Tell me, Lector, had this man any adventures?

LECTOR. None that I know of.

AUCTOR. Had he opinions?

LECTOR. Yes. I forgot to tell you he was a Unionist. He spoke two foreign languages badly. He often went abroad to a.s.sisi, Florence, and Boulogne... He left 7,623 pounds 6s. 8d., and a house and garden at Sutton. His wife lives there still.

AUCTOR. Oh!

LECTOR. It is the human story... the daily task!

AUCTOR. Very true, my dear Lector... the common lot... Now let me tell my story. It is about the Hole that could not be Filled Up.

LECTOR. Oh no! Auctor, no! That is the oldest story in the--

AUCTOR. Patience, dear Lector, patience! I will tell it well. Besides which I promise you it shall never be told again. I will copyright it.

Well, once there was a Learned Man who had a bargain with the Devil that he should warn the Devil's emissaries of all the good deeds done around him so that they could be upset, and he in turn was to have all those pleasant things of this life which the Devil's allies usually get, to wit a Comfortable Home, Self-Respect, good health, 'enough money for one's rank', and generally what is called 'a happy useful life'--_till_ midnight of All-Hallowe'en in the last year of the nineteenth century.

So this Learned Man did all he was required, and daily would inform the messenger imps of the good being done or prepared in the neighbourhood, and they would upset it; so that the place he lived in from a nice country town became a great Centre of Industry, full of wealth and desirable family mansions and street property, and was called in h.e.l.l 'Depot B' (Depot A you may guess at). But at last toward the 15th of October 1900, the Learned Man began to shake in his shoes and to dread the judgement; for, you see, he had not the comfortable ignorance of his kind, and was compelled to believe in the Devil w.i.l.l.y-nilly, and, as I say, he shook in his shoes.

So he bethought him of a plan to cheat the Devil, and the day before All-Hallowe'en he cut a very small round hole in the floor of his study, just near the fireplace, right through down to the cellar. Then he got a number of things that do great harm (newspapers, legal doc.u.ments, unpaid bills, and so forth) and made ready for action.

Next morning when the little imps came for orders as usual, after prayers, he took them down into the cellar, and pointing out the hole in the ceiling, he said to them: