England -- Description and travel; Icknield Way (England); Thomas, Edward, 1878-1917
fellow without a house, or wife, or any goods or gods, yet this is how
the admirer used to picture lords and generals when a little boy at
school. He is not thinking about rent, accounts, education, clothes,
the poor, church, chapel, appendicitis, or this time next year. He is
not apparently in a hurry. He has no vote, and one party in power is
as good as the other to him. No doubt a wasteful fellow--has fallen,
perhaps, through drink--is good-natured possibly, but would not stop
short at violence on occasion--idle with all his strength--and yet....
And yet? The figure and face against the light stick in the mind of
the man out in the street. He is discontented. He grumbles at his wife
when he goes in because she has not done something, and he does more,
he grows enraged, when he finds that she really has done it, but has
not had time to tell him. He lies still in bed on his back, thinking
for a long time. His wife lies still, and he knows that she also is
awake thinking. He says “Good night,” hoping she will say something to
comfort him for his fruitless wakefulness. But she says “Good night,”
and no more. They remain silent. He has the image of the drinker clear
in the darkness before he falls asleep. Left entirely alone his wife
sighs, and presently she also is asleep.
But I do not wish to say that Wallingford is as respectable as
Coldiston. All I can say is that the ford below is very old, and it
is highly probable that some travellers on the Icknield Way followed
the road I had been on from Gypsies’ Corner to Wallingford and then
into the Berkshire Ickleton Street at Blewbury, if not before. Others,
avoiding Wallingford, might have crossed at Little Stoke, from which a
westward road goes up, called the “Papist Way.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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