far. Walking distance, even for me. I have never used the new chairs that are lifted and carried by porters. Pardy because I don’t need them and partly because among the young they have become a sport: they race each other, as if the porters are animals, whipping them along. I think this shameful, but know that in this new spirit that reigns in The Cities my objections would seem merely another example of an old man’s whimsy.
It was a fine afternoon. My way went up to the top of the hill, by the Fall, and then through the public squares and places, and then through a wood, which we, The Twelve, had planned and planted. Fine trees now, and spacious shady places where in summer you can find coolness and shade.
I had been walking in my now slow careful way for as long as it took the sun to drop a level in the sky, striking direct through the trees, when I heard the loud laughter and jeering that these days means the youth are near. A gang of seven young men appeared, running up through the trees towards me; they saw me, and then with cries of excitement, as if they had glimpsed a running animal, came towards me. I stopped and faced them. They stopped, a few paces away. Each face was distorted into that sneer which is obligatory now.
‘What have we got here?’ said the leader.
I knew him, I was sure, right from that first moment.
‘Look, an old beggar,’ said another boy. Beggars, once impossible with us, are now common.
‘I like his fwock,’ said the first. This is the new fad among them: they lisp, and put on effeminate airs.
They were wearing a fashion derived from the Barbarians: leather trousers and jerkin, showing their shoulders and chests. I was wearing, as always, my old brown robe.
‘Give me your fwock,’ said the leader.
I stared. I could not help it. Those faces, they were familiar to me anyway, because they were not the now so familiar Barbarian face, which is sharper, bolder, strongly incised, often beautiful, or handsome, where our generic face is broad, frank, open, honest, the face of a perhaps not over-subtle people, but one you trusted. On this face, one so likeable, the sneers and jeers were like a mask which did not fit, and the raucous derision of their style of speaking did not suit their voices either.
Who was he? Who could he be, this boy?
He snatched my stick away, so that I stumbled and nearly fell, and then used it to lift up the bottom of my robe far enough so they could admire my ancient sex: what they were seeing, what I saw every day m the bath, was something like a lump of dried mushrooms. They pointed and sneered and sniggered.
Then I remembered: I knew that face so well. It was part of my oldest, dearest memories: I said, ‘Are you Rollard’s son … grandson … great-grandson?’ I amended.
That face, born to be pleasant and agreeable, returned to this condition for just a moment, then he went deep scarlet, and dropped the stick.
‘Green,’ he muttered. ‘Good green, he’s got the Sight,’
They clustered around me, mouths open, awed, staring.
‘I knew your great-grandfather well,’ I said, and my voice was unsteady, and my eyes wet, seeing that loved face there, before me. He, Rollard, had been one of The Twelve.
They turned and sped off, on one impulse, like birds or fishes. I stood alone in that glade in the wood, and wept, thinking of Rollard, thinking of us all. I picked up my stick, and went on, carefully, through the leaf litter, to DeRod’s gate. There two armed men stood forward, to stop me. I said to them, ‘Stand aside, this is one of The Twelve.’ My emotion had given me an impatience with them, and the unfamiliar words did seem to link up with some chord of memory. They stepped aside, and watched me toil up the path, to the house where appeared to stand watching nie a tall striking woman, obviously a Barbarian, who as I arrived in front of her said, ‘I know who you are.’
‘Tell De Rod I am here,’ I said, understanding that he had not received my message. She hesitated, then went inside. I followed her. She did turn to stop me, but there across the room, staring at me, was a very old man, who lifted his stick to point at me and said, ‘Oh, it’s you at last. Why did it take you so long?’
This knocked the stuffing out of me.
He is a jolly old thing, with puffs of white hair at his ears, a bald pate, and his eyes were full of tears, like mine.
I sat, without being asked.
‘I sent you a message,’ I said. The woman was standing close, hands folded in front of her, watching me.
‘I didn’t get it,’ he said, glancing at her. ‘They take very good care of me, you see.’
He did not seem to be particularly feeble, let alone ill.
‘What’s this about your being ill?’
‘I did have a bit of a turn.’
‘He must not get over-tired,’ she said.
I said to her, ‘I am sure he is capable of deciding when he is tired.’
I don’t think anyone had spoken to her like that for some time. She seemed to gather herself in a movement like a snake about to strike, then resumed her watchful pose.
I said, ‘I would like to talk to DeRod alone.’
Touch and go , . . Then, ‘Yes, leave us.’
I could see this was not a tone he used to her. Her look at me was pure enmity. But she turned and went.
Who was she? I knew that his wife, ‘the town girl’, had died long ago.
‘That is my new woman,’ he said. ‘She is good to me.’ And he giggled.
