Coming in by the moated palace I stood once more on the Green before that west front, beautiful beyond all others, in spite of the strange defeatures Time has written on it. I watched the daws, numerous as ever, still at their old mad games, now springing into the air to scatter abroad with ringing cries, only to return the next minute and fling themselves back on their old perches on a hundred weather-stained broken statues in the niches. And while I stood watching them from the palace trees close by came the loud laugh of the green woodpecker. The same wild, beautiful sound, uttered perhaps by the same bird, which I had often heard at that spot ten years ago! "You will not hear that woodland sound in any other city in the kingdom," I wrote in a book of sketches entitled "Birds and Man", published in 1901.
But of my soul's adventures in Wells on the two or three following days I will say very little. That laugh of the woodpecker was an assurance that Nature had suffered no change, and the town too, like the hills and rocks and running waters, seemed unchanged; but how different and how sad when I looked for those I once knew, whose hands I had hoped to grasp again! Yes, some were living still; and a dog too, one I used to take out for long walks and many a mad rabbit-hunt—a very handsome white-and-liver coloured spaniel. I found him lying on a sofa, and down he got and wagged his tail vigorously, pretending, with a pretty human hypocrisy in his gentle yellow eyes, that he knew me perfectly well, that I was not a bit changed, and that he was delighted to see me.
On my way back to Bath I had a day at Bristol. It was cattle-market day, and what with the bellowings, barkings, and shoutings, added to the buzz and clang of innumerable electric tramcars and the usual din of street traffic, one got the idea that the Bristolians had adopted a sort of Salvation Army theory, and were endeavouring to conquer earth (it is not heaven in this case) by making a tremendous noise. I amused myself strolling about and watching the people, and as train after train came in late in the day discharging loads of humanity, mostly young men and women from the surrounding country coming in for an evening's amusement, I noticed again the peculiarly Welsh character of the Somerset peasant—the shape of the face, the colour of the skin, and, above all, the expression.
Freeman, when here below, proclaimed it his mission to prove that "Englishmen were Englishmen, and not somebody else." It appeared to me that any person, unbiassed by theories on such a subject, looking at that crowd, would have come to the conclusion, sadly or gladly, according to his nature, that we are, in fact, "somebody else."
Chapter Fourteen: The Return of the Native
That "going back" about which I wrote in the second chapter to a place where an unexpected beauty or charm has revealed itself, and has made its image a lasting and prized possession of the mind, is not the same thing as the revisiting a famous town or city, rich in many beauties and old memories, such as Bath or Wells, for instance. Such centres have a permanent attraction, and one who is a rover in the land must return to them again and again, nor does he fail on each successive visit to find some fresh charm or interest. The sadness of such returns, after a long interval, is only, as I have said, when we start "looking up" those with whom we had formed pleasant friendly relations. And all because of the illusion that we shall see them as they were—that Time has stood still waiting for our return, and by and by, to our surprise and grief, we discover that it is not so; that the dear friends of other days, long unvisited but unforgotten, have become strangers. This human loss is felt even more in the case of a return to some small centre, a village or hamlet where we knew every one, and our intimacy with the people has produced the sense of being one in blood with them. It is greatest of all when we return to a childhood's or boyhood's home. Many writers have occupied themselves with this mournful theme, and I imagine that a person of the proper Amiel-like tender and melancholy moralizing type of mind, by using his own and his friends' experiences, could write a charmingly sad and pretty book on the subject.
The really happy returns of this kind must be exceedingly rare. I am almost surprised to think that I am able to recall as many as two, but they hardly count, as in both instances the departure or exile from home happens at so early a time of life that no recollections of the people survived—nothing, in fact, but a vague mental picture of the place. One was of a business man I knew in London, who lost his early home in a village in the Midlands, as a boy of eight or nine years of age, through the sale of the place by his father, who had become impoverished. The boy was trained to business in London, and when a middle-aged man, wishing to retire and spend the rest of his life in the country, he revisited his native village for the first time, and discovered to his joy that he could buy back the old home. He was, when I last saw him, very happy in its possession.
The other case I will relate more fully, as it is a very curious one, and came to my knowledge in a singular way.
At a small station near Eastleigh a man wearing a highly pleased expression on his face entered the smoking-carriage in which I was travelling to London. Putting his bag on the rack, he pulled out his pipe and threw himself back in his seat with a satisfied air; then, looking at me and catching my eye, he at once started talking. I had my newspaper, but seeing him in that overflowing mood I responded readily enough, for I was curious to know why he appeared so happy and who and what he was. Not a tradesman nor a bagman, and not a farmer, though he looked like an open-air man; nor could I form a guess from his speech and manner as to his native place. A robust man of thirty-eight or forty, with blue eyes and a Saxon face, he looked a thorough Englishman, and yet he struck me as most un-English in his lively, almost eager manner, his freedom with a stranger, and something, too, in his speech. From time to time his face lighted up, when, looking to the window, his eyes rested on some pretty scene—a glimpse of stately old elm trees in a field where cattle were grazing, of the vivid green valley of a chalk stream, the paler hills beyond, the grey church tower or spire of some tree-hidden village. When he discovered that these hills and streams and rustic villages had as great a charm for me as for himself, that I knew and loved the two or three places he named in a questioning way, he opened his heart and the secret of his present happiness.