A Lost Masterpiece
A City Mood, Aug. '93
By George Egerton
I regret it, but what am I to do? It was not my fault—I can only regret it. It was thus it happened to me.
I had come to town straight from a hillside cottage in a lonely ploughland, with the smell of the turf in my nostrils, and the swish of the scythes in my ears; the scythes that flashed in the meadows where the upland hay, drought-parched, stretched thirstily up to the clouds that mustered upon the mountain-tops, and marched mockingly away, and held no rain.
The desire to mix with the crowd, to lay my ear once more to the heart of the world and listen to its life-throbs, had grown too strong for me; and so I had come back—but the sights and sounds of my late life clung to me—it is singular how the most opposite things often fill one with associative memory.
That gamin of the bird-tribe, the Cockney sparrow, recalled the swallows that built in the tumble-down shed; and I could almost see the gleam of their white bellies, as they circled in ever narrowing sweeps and clove the air with forked wings, uttering a shrill note, with a querulous grace-note in front of it.
The freshness of the country still lurked in me, unconsciously influencing my attitude towards the city.
One forenoon business drove me citywards, and following an inclination that always impels me to water-ways rather than roadways, I elected to go by river steamer.
I left home in a glad mood, disposed to view the whole world with kindly eyes. I was filled with a happy-go-lucky insouciance that made walking the pavements a loafing in Elysian fields. The coarser touches of street-life, the oddities of accent, the idiosyncrasies of that most eccentric of city-dwellers, the Londoner, did not jar as at other times—rather added a zest to enjoyment; impressions crowded in too quickly to admit of analysis, I was simply an interested spectator of a varied panorama.