Cause and effect were unrelated. It was simply that the truth flashed

into me. I knew.

What did I know? Perhaps that the gulf between us lay

as wide as that between the earth and Sirius; perhaps that we were,

individually, of a kind so separate, so different, that mutual

understanding was impossible; perhaps that while she was of To-day and

proud of it, I was of another time, another century, and proud of that.

I cannot say precisely. Her words, while they increased my sense of

isolation, of solitude, of melancholy, at the same time also made me

laugh, as assuredly they will now make you laugh.

For, while she was behind me in the morning-room,

fingering some letters on the table, I stood six feet away beside the

open window, listening to the nightingales—the English

nightingales—that sang across the quiet garden in the dusk. The

high-pitched clamour of the jungle choruses with their monstrous

turmoil, their prolific detail, came back to me in startling contrast.

This exquisite and delicious sound I now heard belonged still to

England. And it had not changed. “No hungry generations tread thee

down…” rose in some forgotten corner of my mind, and my yearning that would be satisfied moved forth to catch the notes.

“Listen, mother,” I said, turning towards her.

She raised her head and smiled a little before

reading the rest of the letter that she held.

“I only pray they won’t keep you awake, dear boy,”

she answered gently. “They give us very little peace, I’m afraid, just

now.”

Perhaps she caught some expression in my face, for

she added a trifle more quickly: “That’s the worst of the spring —our

English spring—it is so noisy!” Still smiling, she picked up her

letter again, while I, though still listening by the window, heard only

the harsh scream and rattle of the jungle voices, thousands and

thousands of miles away across the world.

VII

IT was some little time after my arrival, as I shall presently

relate, that the experience I call the thrill came to me in

England—and, like all its predecessors, came through Nature. It came,

that is, through the only apparatus I possessed as yet that could

respond.

The point, I think, is of special interest; I note it now, on

looking back upon the series as a whole, though at the time I did not

note it.

For, compared with -yourself at any rate, the aesthetic side of me

is somewhat raw; of pictures, sculpture, music I am untaught and

ignorant; with other Philistines, I “know what I like,” but nothing

more. It is the honest but uncultured point of view. I am that

primitive thing, the mere male animal. It was my love of Nature,

therefore, that showed me beauty, since this was the only apparatus in

my temperament able to respond. Natural, simple things, as before, were

the channel through which beauty appealed to that latent store of love

and wisdom in me which, it almost seemed, were being slowly educated.

The talks and intimacies with our mother, then, were largely over;

the re-knitting of an interrupted relationship was fairly accomplished;

she had asked her questions, and listened to my answers. All the

dropped threads had been picked up again, so that a pattern, similar to

the one laid aside, now lay spread more or less comfortably before us.

Outwardly, things seemed much as they were when I left home so many

years ago. One might have thought the interval had been one of months,

since her attitude refused to recognize all change, and change, qud growth, was abhorrent to her type. For whereas I had altered, she had

remained unmoved.

So unsatisfying was this state of things to me, however, that I felt

unable to confide my deepest, as now I can do easily to you—so that

during these few days of intercourse renewed, we had said, it seemed,

all that was to be said with regard to the past. My health was most

lovingly discussed, and then my immediate and remoter future. I was

aware of this point of view—that I was, of course, her own dear son,

but that I was also England’s son. She was intensely patriotic in the

insular sense; my soul, I mean, belonged to the British Empire rather

than to humanity and the world at large. Doubtless, a very right and

natural way to look at things…. She expressed a real desire to “see

your photographs, my boy, of those outlandish places where they sent

you”; then, having asked certain questions about the few women

(officers’ wives and so forth) who appeared in some of them, she leaned

back in her chair, and gave me her very definite hopes about “my value

to the country,” my “duty to the family traditions,” even to the point,

finally, of suggesting Parliament, in what she termed with a certain

touch of pride and dignity, “the true Conservative interest.”

“Men like yourself, Richard, are sorely needed now,” she added,

looking at me with a restrained admiration; “I am sure the Party would

nominate you for this Constituency that your father and your

grandfather both represented before you. At any rate, they shall not

put you on the shelf!”

And before I went to bed—it was my second or third night, I

think—she had let me see plainly another hope that was equally dear to

her: that I should marry again. There was an ominous reference to my

“ample means,” a hint of regret that, since you were

unavailable, and Eva dead, our branch of the family could not continue

to improve the eastern counties and the world. At the back of her mind,

indeed, I think there hovered definite names, for a garden party in my

honour was suggested for the following week, to which the Chairman of

the Local Conservatives would come, and where various desirable

neighbours would be only too proud to make my acquaintance and press my

colonial and distinguished fingers.

In the interval between my arrival and the “experience” I shall

presently describe, I had meanwhile renewed my acquaintance with the

countryside. The emotions, however, I anticipated, had even cherished

and eagerly looked forward to, had not materialized. There was a chill

of disappointment over me. For the beauty I had longed for

seemed here so thickly veiled; and more than once I surprised in my

heart a certain regret that I had come home at all.