"I wish
we could. Where the deuce shall we catch him now?"
"I keep forgetting the name of the common," said Basil, as he
buttoned up his coat. "The Elms--what is it? Buxton Common, near
Purley. That's where we shall find him."
"But there is no such place," groaned Rupert; but he followed his
brother downstairs.
We all followed him. We snatched our hats from the hat-stand and
our sticks from the umbrella-stand; and why we followed him we did
not and do not know. But we always followed him, whatever was the
meaning of the fact, whatever was the nature of his mastery. And
the strange thing was that we followed him the more completely the
more nonsensical appeared the thing which he said. At bottom, I
believe, if he had risen from our breakfast table and said: "I am
going to find the Holy Pig with Ten Tails," we should have followed
him to the end of the world.
I don't know whether this mystical feeling of mine about Basil on
this occasion has got any of the dark and cloudy colour, so to
speak, of the strange journey that we made the same evening. It was
already very dense twilight when we struck southward from Purley.
Suburbs and things on the London border may be, in most cases,
commonplace and comfortable. But if ever by any chance they really
are empty solitudes they are to the human spirit more desolate and
dehumanized than any Yorkshire moors or Highland hills, because the
suddenness with which the traveller drops into that silence has
something about it as of evil elf-land.
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