I never pass it without feeling
better for the sight of it. Such a mellow, bright, sweet old wall; what
a charming picture it would make, with the lichen creeping here, and the
moss growing there, a shy young vine peeping over the top at this spot,
to see what is going on upon the busy river, and the sober old ivy
clustering a little farther down! There are fifty shades and tints and
hues in every ten yards of that old wall. If I could only draw, and knew
how to paint, I could make a lovely sketch of that old wall, I'm sure.
I've often thought I should like to live at Hampton Court. It looks so
peaceful and so quiet, and it is such a dear old place to ramble round in
the early morning before many people are about.
But, there, I don't suppose I should really care for it when it came to
actual practice. It would be so ghastly dull and depressing in the
evening, when your lamp cast uncanny shadows on the panelled walls, and
the echo of distant feet rang through the cold stone corridors, and now
drew nearer, and now died away, and all was death-like silence, save the
beating of one's own heart.
We are creatures of the sun, we men and women. We love light and life.
That is why we crowd into the towns and cities, and the country grows
more and more deserted every year. In the sunlight - in the daytime,
when Nature is alive and busy all around us, we like the open hill-sides
and the deep woods well enough: but in the night, when our Mother Earth
has gone to sleep, and left us waking, oh! the world seems so lonesome,
and we get frightened, like children in a silent house. Then we sit and
sob, and long for the gas-lit streets, and the sound of human voices, and
the answering throb of human life. We feel so helpless and so little in
the great stillness, when the dark trees rustle in the night-wind. There
are so many ghosts about, and their silent sighs make us feel so sad.
Let us gather together in the great cities, and light huge bonfires of a
million gas-jets, and shout and sing together, and feel brave.
Harris asked me if I'd ever been in the maze at Hampton Court. He said
he went in once to show somebody else the way. He had studied it up in a
map, and it was so simple that it seemed foolish - hardly worth the
twopence charged for admission. Harris said he thought that map must
have been got up as a practical joke, because it wasn't a bit like the
real thing, and only misleading. It was a country cousin that Harris
took in. He said:
"We'll just go in here, so that you can say you've been, but it's very
simple. It's absurd to call it a maze. You keep on taking the first
turning to the right. We'll just walk round for ten minutes, and then go
and get some lunch."
They met some people soon after they had got inside, who said they had
been there for three-quarters of an hour, and had had about enough of it.
Harris told them they could follow him, if they liked; he was just going
in, and then should turn round and come out again. They said it was very
kind of him, and fell behind, and followed.
They picked up various other people who wanted to get it over, as they
went along, until they had absorbed all the persons in the maze. People
who had given up all hopes of ever getting either in or out, or of ever
seeing their home and friends again, plucked up courage at the sight of
Harris and his party, and joined the procession, blessing him. Harris
said he should judge there must have been twenty people, following him,
in all; and one woman with a baby, who had been there all the morning,
insisted on taking his arm, for fear of losing him.
Harris kept on turning to the right, but it seemed a long way, and his
cousin said he supposed it was a very big maze.
"Oh, one of the largest in Europe," said Harris.
"Yes, it must be," replied the cousin, "because we've walked a good two
miles already."
Harris began to think it rather strange himself, but he held on until, at
last, they passed the half of a penny bun on the ground that Harris's
cousin swore he had noticed there seven minutes ago. Harris said: "Oh,
impossible!" but the woman with the baby said, "Not at all," as she
herself had taken it from the child, and thrown it down there, just
before she met Harris. She also added that she wished she never had met
Harris, and expressed an opinion that he was an impostor. That made
Harris mad, and he produced his map, and explained his theory.
"The map may be all right enough," said one of the party, "if you know
whereabouts in it we are now."
Harris didn't know, and suggested that the best thing to do would be to
go back to the entrance, and begin again. For the beginning again part
of it there was not much enthusiasm; but with regard to the advisability
of going back to the entrance there was complete unanimity, and so they
turned, and trailed after Harris again, in the opposite direction. About
ten minutes more passed, and then they found themselves in the centre.
Harris thought at first of pretending that that was what he had been
aiming at; but the crowd looked dangerous, and he decided to treat it as
an accident.
