HE traveller sat upon the milestone just where the road, skirting the brow of the hill, branched off into the forest. At his feet lay the detached wheel; further away, in pathetic attitude, the remainder of the chaise itself. A stout bay, unconscious of as handsome a pair of broken knees as ever horse displayed, was tethered to a crooked stump of tree, browsing all the young grass and crinkled leaves within reach. The situation spoke for itself; and the young traveller's handsome face spoke for the situation, as eloquently as Nature, who had bestowed upon him a markedly disdainful and impassive set of features, would permit.
Behind him rose the cool gloom of the forest. Below lay the plain, gold-powdered by the level rays of a sinking sun. Between the edge of the road and the forest margin ran a noisy stream. A thrush sang on the topmost branch of a fir-tree. But he on the milestone was blind to the gold of the valley, deaf to the gold of the song. "Now here's a pretty kettle of fish!" was all his thought.
To have been stuck a whole hour upon a stone, with a postilion ranging the country on horseback in one direction, and a valet a-foot in the other, and no help as yet forthcoming, not to have had himself within hail, all those weary minutes, one single human being …! Between intervals of drowsiness he cursed the peaceful valley land, with its fair fields and orchards, as the most God-forsaken of countries.
Presently his moody eye quickened. On the road below, a moving object was approaching. 'Twas but a pedestrian, alas! Nevertheless he might prove of use for succour or advice.
But, as the oncomer drew nearer and began to foot the ascent, the glimmer of hope died in the discontented gentleman's heart. Here was no sturdy native, likely guide to smithy or village inn. 'Twas a mere ambulant musician, as strange, doubtless, to the country as himself. The sun-rays were even now glinting back, roseate, from the varnish of a fiddle. The traveller relapsed into moodiness.
At the steep curve of the hillside, man and fiddle vanished from view. Nevertheless, that he was still climbing, the advance, in interrupted measure, of a singular little tune, half sourdine, half pizzicato, soon proclaimed. It seemed at first so woven in with the babble of the brook, the deep choiring of the forest and the song of the thrush, that the young man on the milestone hardly realised its separate existence. But, as it hovered ever closer, he was forced to listen and even to follow. It was the very song of the rover—of the rover on foot, humble and yet proud, without a penny, without a bond, glad of the free water to drink and the hunk of bread by the roadside. A song of the nodding grass and the bird in the hedge, of the dancing leaf, the circling lark, the wide, kind skies. O, the road is full of gay things and tender things, of sweetness and refreshment, of wholesome fatigue and glorious sleep, for those that know its secrets!
"Good evening to you, young sir."
The little tune had stopped. A man's figure, exaggeratedly thin, black against the sunset, had suddenly emerged over the brow of the hill and, with a wide sweep, was saluting.
The gesture of the black silhouette seemed so courtly, the voice that came from it so refined, that the young gentleman almost rose to return the salutation; but in time he caught sight of the violin curves … Pooh, it was the fiddling vagabond! Ashamed of his impulse, he drew forth a florin and flung it.
The musician skipped nimbly on one side; the coin fell, flashing in the red sun-shafts. He looked from it to the imperious donor and smiled, and his teeth shone as white as a wolfs in the deep tan of his face. Then off went his battered hat again and out was stretched a sinewy leg, in dusty blue stocking; to accompany a bow such as twenty years ago might have raised the envy of your finest Versailles marquis.
"I greet you! I salute you, my young lord!" The fiddler rose from his inclination and burst out laughing. "Cease fondling those pistols in your pocket, worthy sir," cried he, "for by Calliope, 'tis not your money-bags I covet just now, but O, your golden youth!"
"The fellow has a wild eye," thought the gentleman. Now it is a question whether even a highway robber were not more agreeable to encounter on a lonely road than a madman.
"If it be madness to honour in you such a gift of the gods," said the singular vagrant, reading the thought, "then am I mad, sir—stark, staring."