The last thing he
saw of Bourcelles was the top of the church spire and the red roof of
the towering Citadelle. The crest of the sentinel poplar topped them
both for a minute longer, waved a slight and stately farewell, then
lowered itself into the forest and vanished in its turn.
And Rogers came back with a start and a bump to what is called real
life.
He closed his eyes and leaned back in his corner, feeling he had
suddenly left his childhood behind him for the second time, not
gradually as it ought to happen, but all in one dreadful moment. A
great ache lay in his heart. The perfect book of fairy-tales he had
been reading was closed and finished. Weeks had passed in the
delicious reading, but now the last page was turned; he came back to
duty--duty in London--great, noisy, overwhelming London, with its
disturbing bustle, its feverish activities, its complex, artificial,
unsatisfying amusements, and its hosts of frantic people. He grew
older in a moment; he was forty again now; an instant ago, just on the
further side of those blue woods, he had been fifteen. Life shrank and
dwindled in him to a little, ugly, unattractive thing. He was
returning to a flat in the dolorous edifice of civilisation. A great
practical Scheme, rising in sombre bricks and mortar through a
disfiguring fog, blocked all the avenues of the future.
Pages:
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471