From The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
It was one of these mysterious fairy calls from out the void that
suddenly reached Mole in the darkness, making him tingle through and
through with its very familiar appeal, even while yet he could not clearly remember what it was. He stopped dead in
his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its efforts to
recapture the fine filament, the telegraphic current, that had so
strongly moved him. A moment, and he had caught it again; and with it
this time came recollection in fullest flood.
Home! That
was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafting
through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all
one way! Why, it must be quite close by him at that moment, his old
home that he had hurriedly forsaken and never sought again, that day
when he first found the river! And now it was sending out its scouts
and its messengers to capture him and bring him in. Since his escape on
that bright morning he had hardly given it a thought, so absorbed had
he been in his new life, in all its pleasures, its surprises, its fresh
and captivating experiences. Now, with a rush of old memories, how
clearly it stood up before him, in the darkness!
* * *
He saw clearly how plain and simple - how narrow even - it all was; but
clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some
such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the
new life and its splendid places, to turn his back on sun and air and all
they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all
too strong, it called to him still, and he knew he must return to the larger
stage.
Chatboard (0)