LVI

It was by what we clumsily call _chance_ but really by what I am

learning to perceive to be the subtlest and prettiest surprises of the

Power that walks beside us, that I found myself in Ely yesterday

morning--the first real day of summer. The air was full of sunshine,

like golden dust, and all the plants had taken a leap forward in the

night, and were unfurling their crumpled flags as speedily as they

might. I came vaguely down to the river, guided by the same good

spirit, and there at the boat-wharf I found a little motor-launch

lying, which could be hired for the day. I took it, like the Lady of

Shalott; but I did not write my name on the prow, because it had

already some silly, darting kind of name. A mild, taciturn man took

charge of my craft; and without delay we clicked and gurgled out into

the stream.

I wish I could describe the day, for it was sweeter than honey and the

honeycomb; and I should like to pour out of my stored sweetness for

others. But I can hardly say what happened. It was all just like the

tale of Shalott, with this difference, that there was no shadow of doom

overhanging me; I felt more like a fairy prince with some pretty

adventure awaiting me as soon as the town, with gardens and balconies,

should begin to fringe the stream; perhaps a hand would be waved from

the lawn, embowered in lilacs, of some sequestered house by the

water-side. There was no singing aloud of mournful carols either, but

my heart made a quiet and wistful music of its own.

I thought that I should have liked a more grave and ancient mode of

conveyance; but how silly to desire that! The Lady of Shalott's boat

was no doubt of the latest and neatest trim, fully up to her drowsy

date; and as for quaintness, no doubt a couple of hundred years hence,

when our river-craft may be cigar-shaped torpedoes of aluminium for all

I know, a picture of myself in my homely motor-boat, with antiquated

hat and odd grey suit, will appear quaint and old-timed enough. And,

anyhow, the ripple gurgled under the prow, the motor ticked tranquilly,

and the bubbles danced in the wake. We went on swiftly enough, and

every time that I turned the great towers had grown fainter in the

haze; we slid by the green flood-banks, with here and there a bunch of

kingcups blazing in glory, the elbows of the bank full of white

cow-parsley, comfrey, and water-dock. I heard the sedge-warbler whistle

drily in the willow-patch, and a nightingale sang with infinite

sweetness in a close of thorn-bushes now bursting into bloom; blue sky

above, a sapphire streak of waterway ahead, green banks on either side;

a little enough matter to fill a heart with joy. Once I had a thrill

when a pair of sandpipers flicked out of a tiny cove and flew, glancing

white, with pointed wings ahead of us. Again we started them, and

again, till they wearied of the chase and flew back, with a wide

circuit, to their first haunt. A cuckoo in a great poplar fluted

solemnly and richly as we murmured past; the world was mostly hidden

from us, but now and then a church tower looked gravely over the bank,

and ran beside us for a time, or the lowing of cattle came softly from

a pasture, or I heard the laughter of unseen children from a cottage

garth. Once or twice we passed an inn, with cheerful, leisurely people

sitting smiling together on a lawn, like a scene out of a romance; and

then at last, on passing Baitsbite lock, we slipped into a merrier

world. Here we heard the beat of rowlocks, the horse-hoofs of a coach

thudded on the bank, and a crew of jolly young men went gliding past,

with a cox shouting directions, just as I might have been doing thirty

years ago! Thirty years ago! And it seems like yesterday, and I not a

scrap older or wiser, though, thank God, a good deal happier. Even so

we drift on to the unseen. Then we passed a village, the thatched

cottages with their white gables rising prettily from the blossoming

orchards. Ditton on its little hill; and the old iron bridge thundered

and clanked with a passing train; then came the rattle of the grinds;

and the mean houses of Barnwell; and soon we were gliding up among the

backs, under the bridge of St. John's, by the willow-hung walks of

Trinity, by the ivied walls and trim gardens of Clare, past the great

white palace-front of King's, and so by the brick gables and oriels of

Queens' into the Newnham mill-pool. It was somehow not like Cambridge,

but like some enchanted town of palaces; and I would not break the

spell; so we swung about, made no stay, and then slowly reversed the

whole panorama again, through the long, still afternoon.

The old life of Cambridge--it was all there, after the long years, just

the same, full of freshness and laughter; but I came into it as a

_revenant_, and yet with no sense of sadness, rather of joy that it

should all be so continuous and bright. I did not want it back; I did

not desire any part in it, but was merely glad to watch and remember. I

thought of myself as a fitful boy full of dreams and hopes, some

fulfilled, some unfulfilled; those that I have realised so strangely

unlike what I expected, those unrealised still beckoning with radiant

visage. I did not even desire any companionship, any interchange of

thought and mood. Was it selfish, dull, unenterprising to be so

content? I do not think so, for a stream of gentle emotion, which I

know was sweet and which I think was pure, lapsed softly through my

mind all day. It is not always thus with me, and I took the good day

from the hands of God as a perfect gift; and though it would be easy to

argue that I could have been better employed, a deeper instinct said to

me that I was meant to be thus, and that, after all, God sends us into

the world to live, though often enough our life tosses like a fretful

stream among rocky boulders and under troubled skies. God can give and

he can withhold; I do not question his power or his right; I mourn over

the hard gifts from his hand; but when he sends me a sweet gift, let me

try to realise, what I do not doubt, that indeed he wishes me well.

Once in the afternoon we stayed our boat, and I climbed to the top of

the flood-bank and sate looking out over the wide fen; I saw the long

dykes run eastward, the far-off churches, the distant hazy hills; and I

thought of all the troubles that men make for each other, adding so

wantonly to the woes of the world. And I wondered what was this strange

fibre of pain so inwoven in the life of the world, wondered wistfully

and rebelliously, till I felt that I drew nearer in that quiet hour to

the Heart of God. I could not be mistaken. There was peace hidden

there, the peace that to-day brooded over the kindly earth, all

carpeted with delicate green, in the cool water lapping in the reeds,

in the green thorn-bush and the birds' sudden song, even in this

restless heart that would fain find its haven and its home.