and set out by the lapping waves of Derwentwater for glorious Sty Head
and hear the murmurs from Glaramara's inmost caves and scramble up
Great Gable and over by Eskhause and Scafell and down into the green
pastures of Langdale. And there in that sanctuary with its starry dome
and its encompassing hills I should find the thing I sought.
Then, like the barber, I shall be moved to do something desperate. I
shall want some oblation to lay on the altar, and if I know my
companion he will not have forgotten his hundred foot of rope or his
craft of the mountains and together we will
Leave our rags on Pavey Ark,
Our cards on Pillar grim.
And then, the consecration and the offering complete, back to the world
that is shuddering, white-faced and wondering, into its Paradise
Regained.... Why, here is St. John's Wood already. And Lord's! Of
course, I _must_ have a day at Lord's. It will be a part of the ritual
of reconciliation. The old players will not be there, for the gulf
with the past is wide and the bones of many a great artist lie on
distant fields. But we must recapture their music and pay homage to
their memory. Yes, I will take my lunch to Lord's--or perchance the
Oval--and sit in the sunshine and hear the merry tune of bat and ball,
and walk over the greensward in the interval and look at the wicket,
and talk for a whole day with my companion of the giants of old and of
the doughty things we have seen them do. Haig and Hindenburg, Tirpitz
and Jellicoe, all the names that have filled our nightmare shall be
forgotten: there shall fall from our lips none but the names of the
goodly game--"W.G." and Ranji, Johnny Briggs and Lohmann, Spofforth and
Bonner, Ulyett and Barnes (a brace of them) and all the jolly host.
We'll not forget one of them. Not one. For a whole day we will go it,
hammer and tongs.
And there are ever so many more things I shall want to do. I shall
want to go and see the chestnuts at Bushey Park on Chestnut Sunday. I
shall want to send Christmas cards, and light bonfires on the Fifth,
and make my young friends April fools on the First, and feel what a
tennis racket is like, and have hot cross buns on Good Friday and
pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. I shall want to go and sit on the sands
and hear nigger minstrels again, and talk about the prospects of the
Boat Race, and take up all the pleasant threads of life that fell from
our hands nearly four years ago. In short, I shall plunge into all the
old harmless gaieties that we have forgotten, have no time for, no
heart for, no use for to-day.
But the bus has stopped and I am turned out of Eden into the snow and
the slush and the never-ending night. The magic chariot goes on with
its blazing lights, and a bend in the road quenches the pleasant vision
in darkness.