This splendid main road in the course of its immense
journey across Southern England, extended feelers
to many settlements of man, providing them as it were
with a talent which, according to the energy of the
settlement, might be increased a hundredfold—drained,
metalled, tarred, and adorned with splendid telegraph
poles and wires—or might be wrapped up
in a napkin of neglect, monstrous overgrown hedges
and decayed ditches, and allowed to wither: the
splendid main road, having regard to its ancient Roman
lineage, disdainfully did not care tuppence either
way; and for that matter Penny Green, which had ages
ago put its feeler in a napkin, did not care tuppence
either.
It was now, however, to have a railway.
And meanwhile there was this to be said for it:
that whereas some of the dependents of the splendid
main road constituted themselves abominably ugly carbuncles
on the end of shapely and well-manicured fingers of
the main road, Penny Green, at the end of a withered
and entirely neglected finger, adorned it as with
a jewel.
A Kate Greenaway picture, the garrulous Hapgood had
said of Penny Green; and it was well said. At
its eastern extremity the withered talent from the
splendid main road divided into two talents and encircled
the Green which had, as Hapgood had said, a cricket
pitch (in summer) and a duck pond (more prominent
in winter); also, in all seasons, and the survivors
of many ages, a clump of elm trees surrounded by a
decayed bench; a well surrounded by a decayed paling,
so decayed that it had long ago thrown itself flat
on the ground into which it continued venerably to
decay; and at the southeastern extremity a village
pound surrounded by a decayed grey wall and now used
by the youth of the village for the purpose of impounding
one another in parties or sides in a game well called
“Pound I.”
At the southwestern extremity of the Green, and immediately
opposite the Tybar Arms, was a blacksmith’s
forge perpetually inhabited and directed by a race
named Wirk. The forge was the only human habitation
or personal and individual workshop actually on the
Green, and it was said, and freely admitted by the
successive members of the tribe of Wirk, that it had
“no right” to be there. There it nevertheless
was, had been for centuries, so far as anybody knew
to the contrary, and administered always by a Wirk.
In some mysterious way which nobody ever seemed to
recognize till it actually happened there was always
a son Wirk to continue the forge when the father Wirk
died and was carried off to be deposited by his fathers
who had continued it before him. It was also
said in the village, as touching this matter of “no
right”, that nobody could understand how the
forge ever came to be there and that it certainly
would be turned off one day; and with this also the
current members of the tribe of Wirk cordially agreed.
They understood less than anybody how they ever came
to be there, and they knew perfectly well they would
be turned off one day; saying which—and
it was a common subject of debate among village sires
of a summer evening, seated outside the Tybar Arms—saying
which, the Wirk of the day would gaze earnestly up
the road and look at his watch as if the power which
would turn him off was then on its way and was getting
a bit overdue.
