I told him why, and he said quite simply, "Then we have another bond in common."
"Another?" I inquired, but he did not explain; instead he asked:
"How fares your ideal? Have you met him of the cloven foot in Windyridge yet?"
"I fear I brought him with me," I replied, "and I fancy I have seen his footprints in the village. All the same, I do not yet regret my decision. I am very happy here and have forgotten some of my London nightmares, and am no longer 'tossed by storm and flood.' My Inner Self and I are on the best of terms."
He sighed. "Far be it from me to discourage you; and indeed I am glad that the moors have brought you peace. To brood over wrongs we cannot put right is morbid and unhealthy; it saps our vitality and makes us unfit for the conflicts we have to wage. And yet how easy it is for us to let this consideration lead us to the bypath meadows of indifference and self-indulgence. You remember Tennyson:
"'Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?'
"I have led a strenuous life, and taken some part in the battle, but now I have degenerated into a Lotus-eater, with no heart for the fray, 'Lame and old and past my time, and passing now into the night.'"
"Nay," I said, "let me quote Clough in answer to your Tennyson:
"'Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain.
The enemy faints not nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain,
'For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.'