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.
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