and moves into a more generous
and emotional region. Then there is no need to demand or to question
loyalty, because the tie has been welded by many a simple deed, many a
frank word. The ideal is a perfect frankness and sincerity, which
lays bare the soul as it is, without any false shame or any fear of
misunderstanding. A friendship of this kind can be one of the purest,
brightest, and strongest things in the world. Yet how rare it is! What
far oftener happens is that two people, in a sensitive and emotional
mood, are brought together. They begin by comparing experiences, they
search their memories for beautiful and suggestive things, and each
feels, "This nature is the true complement of my own; what light it
seems to shed on my own problems; how subtle, how appreciative it is!"
Then the process of discovery begins. Instead of the fair distant city,
all spires and towers, which we discerned in the distance in a sort
of glory, we find that there are crooked lanes, muddy crossings, dull
market-places, tiresome houses. Odd misshapen figures, fretful and
wearied, plod through the streets or look out at windows; here is a
ruin, with doleful creatures moping in the shade; we overturn a stone,
and blind uncanny things writhe away from the light. We begin to reflect
that it is after all much like other places, and that our fine
romantic view of it was due to some accident of light and colour, some
transfiguring mood of our own mind; and then we set out in search of
another city which we see crowning a hill on the horizon, and leave the
dull place to its own commonplace life. But to begin with comradeship is
to explore the streets and lanes first; and then day by day, as we go
up and down in the town, we become aware of its picturesqueness and
its charm; we realise that it has an intense and eager life of its own,
which we can share as a dweller, though we cannot touch it as a visitor;
and so the wonder grows, and the patient love of home. And we have
surprises, too: we enter a door in a wall that we have not seen before,
and we are in a shrine full of fragrant incense-smoke; the fallen day
comes richly through stained windows; figures move at the altar, where
some holy rite is being celebrated. The truth is that a friendship
cannot be formed in the spirit of a tourist, who is above all in search
of the romantic and the picturesque. Sometimes, indeed, the wandering
traveller may become the patient and contented inhabitant; but