CHAPTER XIII
UP TO LONDON 1882
About the middle of the night the great ship comes to a pause, off the coast of Ireland, and, looking forth across the black waves and through the rifts in the rising mist, we see the low and lonesome verge of that land of trouble and misery. A beautiful white light flashes now and then from the shore, and at intervals the mournful booming of a solemn bell floats over the sea. Soon is heard the rolling click of oars, and then two or three dusky boats glide past the ship, and hoarse voices hail and answer. A few stars are visible in the hazy sky, and the breeze from the land brings off, in fitful puffs, the fragrant balm of grass and clover, mingled with the salt odours of sea-weed and slimy rocks. There is a sense of mystery over the whole wild scene; but we realise now that human companionship is near, and that the long and lonely ocean voyage is ended.
Travellers who make the run from Liverpool to London by the Midland Railway pass through the vale of Derby and skirt around the stately Peak that Scott has commemorated in his novel of Peveril. It is a more rugged country than is seen in the transit by the Northwestern road, but not more beautiful. You see the storied mountain, in its delicacy of outline and its airy magnificence of poise, soaring into the sky—its summit almost lost in the smoky haze—and you wind through hillside pastures and meadow-lands that are curiously intersected with low, zigzag stone walls; and constantly, as the scene changes, you catch glimpses of green lane and shining river; of dense copses that cast their cool shadow on the moist and gleaming emerald sod; of long white roads that stretch away like cathedral aisles and are lost beneath the leafy arches of elm and oak; of little church towers embowered in ivy; of thatched cottages draped with roses; of dark ravines, luxuriant with a wild profusion of rocks and trees; and of golden grain that softly waves and whispers in the summer wind; while, all around, the grassy banks and glimmering meadows are radiant with yellow daisies, and with that wonderful scarlet of the poppy that gives an almost human glow of life and loveliness to the whole face of England. After some hours of such a pageant—so novel, so fascinating, so fleeting, so stimulative of eager curiosity and poetic desire—it is a relief at last to stand in the populous streets and among the grim houses of London, with its surging tides of life, and its turmoil of effort, conflict, exultation, and misery. How strange it seems—yet, at the same time, how homelike and familiar! There soars aloft the great dome of St. Paul's cathedral, with its golden cross that flashes in the sunset! There stands the Victoria tower—fit emblem of the true royalty of the sovereign whose name it bears. And there, more lowly but more august, rise the sacred turrets of the Abbey. It is the same old London—the great heart of the modern world—the great city of our reverence and love. As the wanderer writes these words he hears the plashing of the fountains in Trafalgar Square and the evening chimes that peal out from the spire of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and he knows himself once more at the shrine of his youthful dreams.