"
It was not in these things; it was a sense of something
strange in the mind, of something in some way unlike all other
places and people and experiences. The sensation was like
that of the reader who becomes absorbed in Henry Newbolt's
romance of The Old Country, who identifies himself with the
hero and unconsciously, or without quite knowing how, slips
back out of this modern world into that of half a thousand
years ago. It is the same familiar green land in which he
finds himself--the same old country and the same sort of
people with feelings and habits of life and thought
unchangeable as the colour of grass and flowers, the songs
of birds and the smell of the earth, yet with a difference.
I recognized it chiefly in the parish priest I had been
conversing with; for one thing, his mediaeval mind evidently
did not regard a sense of humour and of the grotesque as out
of place in or on a sacred building. If it had been lighter I
should have looked at the roof for an effigy of a semi-human
toad-like creature smiling down mockingly at the worshippers
as they came and went.
On departing it struck me that it would assuredly be a mistake
to return to this village and look at it again by the common
lights of day. No, it was better to keep the impressions I
had gathered unspoilt; even to believe, if I could, that no
such place existed, but that it had existed exactly as I had
found it, even to the unruly choir-boys, the ascetic-looking
priest with a strange light in his eyes, and the worshippers
who kept pet toads in the church.
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