Much that
tradition had made lovely with the perfume of many centuries I found
modernized until the ancient spirit had entirely fled, leaving a
shell that was artificial to the point of being false. The sanction
of olden time that used to haunt with beauty was deceived by a mockery
I found almost hideous. The ancient inns, for instance, adapted to
week-end motor traffic, were pretentious and uncomfortable, their
"menus" of inferior food written elaborately in French. The
courtliness had vanished, and the cost had come. Telephones
everywhere not only destroyed privacy, but brought dismay into
countless gentle intimacies, their nuisance hardly justified by their
usefulness. Life, it seemed, in a frantic hurry, had been cheapened,
not improved; there was no real progress, but only more unrest. England--too solid to go fast, had made ungainly efforts; but she had
moved towards ungraciousness where she had moved at all; I found her
a cross between a museum and an American mushroom town that
advertises all the modern comforts with a violent insistence that is
meant to cloak their very absence. This, my first impression, toned down, of course, a little later; but
it was my first impression. The people, however, even in the
countryside, seemed proud both of mushroom and museum, and commercial
ugliness, greedy and unashamed, now distorted every old-world
village. The natives were pleased to the point of vanity. For myself, I could not manage this atrocious compromise, and looking
for the dear old England of our boyhood days, I found it not. The
change, of course, was not in the country only, but in myself. The
soul in me, awakened to a new standard, had turned round to face
another way. The Manor House was very still when I arrived from London--& late May
evening between the sunset and the dark. Mother, as you know, met me
at the station, for they had stopped the down-train by special
orders, so that I stepped out upon the deserted platform of the
countryside quite alone, a distinguished man, with my rug and
umbrella. A strange footman touched his hat, an old, stooping porter
stared hard at me, then smiled vaguely, while the guard, eyeing
respectfully the individual for whom his train had halted, waved his
red flag, and swung himself into the disappearing van with the
approved manner we once thought marvellous. I left the empty
platform, gave up my ticket to an untidy boy, and crossed the gloomy
booking-hall. The mournfulness of the whole place was depressing. I
heard a blackbird whistle in a bush against the signal-box. It seemed
to scream. Mother I first saw, seated in the big barouche. She was leaning back,
but sat forwards as I came. She looked into my face across the wide
interval of years now ended, and my heart gave a great boyish leap,
then sank into stillness again abruptly. She seemed to me exactly
the same as usual--only so much smaller. We embraced with a kind of
dignity:

"So here you are, my boy, at last," I heard her say in a quiet voice,
and as though she had seen me a month or two ago, "and very, very
tired, I'll be bound." I took my seat beside her. I felt awkward, stiff, self-conscious;
there was disappointment somewhere. "Oh, I'm all right, mother, thanks," I answered. "But how are you?" And
the next moment, it seemed to me, I heard her asking if I was
hungry;--whereupon, absurd as it must sound, I was aware of an immense
emotion that interfered with my breathing. It broke up through some
repressive layer that had apparently concealed it, and made me
feel--well, had I been thirty-five years younger, I could have
cried--for pleasure. Mother, I think, forgot those years perhaps. To her
I was still in overalls and wanted food. We drove, then, in comparative
silence the four miles behind the big pair of greys, the only remark
that memory credits me with being an enquiry about the identity of the
coachman whose dim outline I saw looming in the darkness just above me. The lamplight showed one shoulder, one arm, one ear, the rest concealed;
but the way he drove was, of course, unmistakeable; slowly, more
cautiously, perhaps, but with the same flourish of the whip, the same
air of untold responsibility as ever. And, will you believe it, my chief
memory of all that scene of anticipated tenderness and home-emotion is
the few words he gave in reply to my enquiry and recognition when at
length the carriage stopped and I got out:

"Well, Brown, I'm glad to see you again. All well at home, I hope?" followed by something of sympathy about his beloved horses. He looked down sideways at me from the box, touching his cockade with
the long yellow whip in his thick, gloved hand. I can hear his warm,
respectful answer now; I can see the gleam of proud pleasure in his eye:

"Yes, sir, thank you, Sir Richard, and glad to see you back again, sir,
and with such success upon you." I moved back to help our mother out. I remember thinking how calm, how
solid, how characteristically inarticulate it all was. Did I wish it
otherwise? I think not. Only there was something in me beating its wings
impatiently like a wild bird that felt the bars close round it.... Mother, I realized, could not have said even what the old coachman had
said to save her life, and I remember wondering what would move her into
the expression of natural joy. All that half-hour, as the hoofs echoed
along the silence of the country road, and the old familiar woods and
fields slid past, no sign of deep emotion had escaped her. She had asked
if I was hungry....

And then the smells! The sweet, faint garden smell in the English
twilight:--of laurels and laurestinus, of lilac, pinks, and the heavy
scent of May, wall-flowers and sweet william too--these, with the
poignant aroma of the old childhood house, were the background of
familiar loveliness against which my subsequent disillusion of the
homeland set itself in such afflicting contrast. I remember, as we
entered the dim hall, the carriage lamps fell on, the flowering
horse-chestnut by the door; the bats were flitting; a big white moth
whirred softly against the brilliant glass as though you and I were
after it again with nets and killing-bottles...  and, helping mother out,
I noticed, besides her smallness, how slow and aged her movements were. "Mother, let me help you. That's what I've come home for," I said,
feeling for her little hand. And she replied so quietly, so calmly it
was almost frigid, "Thank you, dear boy; your arm, perhaps--a moment. They are so stupid about the lamps in the hall, I've had to speak so
often. There, now! It is an awkward step." I felt myself a giant beside
her. She seemed so tiny now. There was something very strong in her
silence and her calm; and though a portion of me liked it, another
portion resented it and felt afraid. Her attitude was like a refusal, a
denial, a refusal to live, a denial of life almost. A tinge of
depression, not far removed from melancholy, stole over my spirit.