But now he was passing Kew Bridge Station, and this reassured him a little; he paused and stood gazing towards the bridge, with his eyes filled with recollection.
“Such a very long time ago,” he was thinking; “It was all such a long time ago—”
Mario and Rosa, Berta and Geppe, and the little Gian-Luca with his hamper—the sudden blue and coolness of bluebells, a child who had pushed them roughly with his foot because they had made him unhappy, because for some inexplicable reason they had taken the comfort from his motto. A gallant motto it had been in its way, so simple, too:
“I have got myself—”
“Yes, but no one has really got himself, that is the trouble,” thought Gian-Luca. “Come on, avanti! There is not much time!” Mario limping with his bunion—“Come on, avanti! There is not much time!” and yet Mario was still at the Capo di Monte, and there he would remain unless Millo took pity and rescued the old lame mule—. Mario had never had time to admire things that lay right under his nose, such as a flowering magnolia tree, or prunias in blossom, or a patch of cool bluebells—he had only had time for enormous longings that had stretched to Land’s End and beyond. And supposing he should ultimately reach his Land’s End—why then he would still say: “Avanti! Come on, avanti! There is not much time, we have no time to look at the sea! …”
Gian-Luca began to walk forward again, and quite soon he had come to Brentford, a detestable place always smelling of gasworks, its streets always fouled by its grimy, black wharves and the grimy boots of its workers. Yet in Brentford it was that the first romance of his pilgrimage touched Gian-Luca; for a steep little hill led down to the water, and there on the water lay a battered old barge, and that barge with a blue swirl of smoke from its chimney was Romance—yes, even in Brentford. But just past the canal he saw a wonderful thing, a tiny orchard in blossom. In spite of the grime and the squalor, it was blooming—a brave little remnant of that army of orchards that must once have marched almost through Brentford itself, filling the air with their good scent of growth and the eye with their heavenly whiteness. Gian-Luca suddenly caught his breath, for a deep new craving was upon him—the craving to bless because of that orchard.
“Not God,” thought Gian-Luca, “for I have not yet found Him—” so his grateful heart blessed the orchard.
Hounslow he passed, and then Neals’ Corner, after which the tramlines ended. Sturdy quick-hedges began to guard fields, real fields that looked placid and consciously green in the pale April sunlight of the morning. Now he was coming to the open country, and meadows with streams and willows he came to, and a widening stream that spread as it rippled brown over last year’s leaves. A great number of birds were piping and singing—blackbirds and thrushes, with here and there a robin; many other birds also, whose songs were unfamiliar to this man for whom England had meant London.
He thought: “It is like a very kind garden where everything goes unmolested.” And he marveled at how little he knew this garden. “I must always have been too busy,” he mused, beginning to loiter a little.
He walked down a pathway that led to the stream, and, undoing his suitcase, he got out some food. Maddalena had included hard-boiled eggs in the menu: she had rolled them up carefully in a grey flannel shirtsleeve, and this made him laugh when he found them. But when he discovered what else she had done, his eyes grew pitiful and tender, for lavender sprigs had been laid among his flannels—two little bunches tied up with blue ribbon—and although his bread and butter had a lavender flavor, he consumed it gladly for her sake.
It was pleasant under the trees by the water, and he stayed there resting for quite a long time; and as he rested what should he hear but the first insistent call of the cuckoo, that strangely alluring, mysterious call to something that lies always just beyond.
Presently he got up and trudged on again, passing through Bedfont, and loitering once more to look at the church, with its tall clipped yew and its curious, squat wooden steeple. By now he was beginning to feel very tired indeed, and the suitcase grew heavier and heavier. Seeing him, one or two people wondered, for the stigma of the city was still upon him in the cut of his suit, in the lightness of his shoes, but above all, perhaps, in his pale, thin face that had lost its Italian sunburn. Footsore and weary, he trudged into Staines and stared dully about him for an inn. He must lodge very cheaply, having brought little money; every penny he had belonged to Maddalena. But he finally selected an inn quite at random, because he liked the look of its signboard—a friendly white lion with the face of a sheepdog.
And that was the end of the first day.
II
Next morning he bought a capacious knapsack with wide webbing straps for the shoulders. His suitcase he left with the landlord of the inn: “I will call for it on my way back,” he promised, not considering where that might lead him.
For that matter he did not know his way forward, but he took the road to Egham. He felt rested, he was stepping out quite briskly with his knapsack, and, after a little, Virginia Water was lying on his right, through the trees. Now he was passing small woods and parklands; there was bracken, too, with its questioning fronds like green marks of interrogation. The sun was turning the water to silver, as though it lay bathed in moonlight; but all these fair things were
