Chapter 20 20.on the way home

Anthony was old, left London, and returned to the eyes of the earth. When Anthony stepped out of Bath station, he didn't expect anyone to greet him.No one in his hometown would come to greet him.He has no luggage.He couldn't remember whether the luggage arrived earlier than him, or later.In any case, his luggage was very little.Some of the property accumulated from this period to that period, he also lost on the road from this period to that period.He kept going from place to place, giving away some possessions, throwing away others, and forgetting about others.So all those years later, he stood at the head of the road back to the mill, as unencumbered as he was when he was a schoolboy coming home from school all those years ago.He wandered through the streets, some of which had changed, and some of which remained the same.Before going out of town, he walked around the cathedral. The cathedral hadn't changed at all. The angels on the right were still walking up step by step, while the angels on the left were still head down, with their feet on the ground. Go up and down.They had been there all those years of his life, but where was he in those years?

"Oh, it's not here, it's there, and I've been dreaming about this cathedral," said a voice in his ear, his father's voice.He looked around. His father must have entered the cathedral or the pump room some time ago.Anthony was hesitant to follow him, perhaps finding him reading some inscriptions in the cathedral, or walking among some Roman ruins in Bath.But he might not be able to find his father and wasted time, and he was anxious to get home. He walked around his alma mater, and to his delight just in time to see the children swarming out of it.For a few minutes he surveyed the front of the school and listened for his mother's hansom.After a while he decided not to wait for the hansom, but to walk home, as he did sometimes, and how many years ago!Before he heard the wheels he might have reached Mrs. Bowton's bakery, where his mother allowed him to stop for a fruit loaf.He could go in and out of the pastry shop freely, and he could ask for this and that without paying a penny, which made him feel as if he was the owner of the shop.He might not want fruit loaf, but a biscuit with raisins in it, and Mrs. Borton would give him whatever he wanted, and never ask him to pay for it.What day would he ask for that wedding cake in the window?That's what he's always wanted.Besides, what is the reason for wanting the same things every day?What are we living for?

Anthony put his hands on his head.He'd heard that question asked before.He tried to think where he had heard that.This effort then turned into an attempt to answer the question.What is he living for?When Mrs. Borton's pastry shop allowed him to choose a wedding cake, he certainly did not choose a penny fruit loaf.There was the shop, and he was there again, staring at the three-tiered cakes with vase-like decorations on top.It is more pleasing than the cake in his memory, and that is the reason why the white sloping roof looks smaller. It turns out that he has grown taller now, and he can reach it, as long as he stands closer, he can see the cake. to the inside.But what if there is nothing in it?

"There's got to be something in there. Those two holes weren't made for nothing." what.There may have always been something in it.But think about it, what if there is nothing inside now? The little room in the house with the sloping roof was perfect and pretty enough for any pair of pigeons.It was arranged from floor to ceiling in the sort of daisy pattern Anshoney remembered from his bedroom wallpaper when he was a kid.At the back of the room was a small window, drawn with the same curtains as in his bedroom.There was a moss-green carpet on the ground, and there were two fat little pigeons squatting in the middle of the carpet. They looked exactly the same, as indistinguishable from two beans, except that one pigeon had blue eyes and the other had brown eyes.Among them lay a silver egg on the rug.

That silver egg was the pride of those two pigeons.They guarded it, cooed to it, and pressed their limp breasts to it. "La la!" sang a pigeon. "Baba!" sang another pigeon.Anthony seemed to feel that the egg was getting smaller and smaller under their care. There was a knock on the window.A pigeon bit the corner of the curtain with its beak and pulled the curtain open.Another pigeon pulled the sheath back and pushed the sash back.It was pitch black outside, neither moon nor stars.But with the light in the room, Anthony saw clearly that the person who knocked on the window was none other than the aunt who was jumping around.

"Are the eggs ready?" she asked. "Ready, jumping lady. But what do we do without her?" asked a pigeon. "That is our precious egg, and it would break our hearts to let it leave us like this," said another pigeon. "Okay, okay, pigeons all over the world are not exactly the same!" said the aunt jumping around ferociously, "Always want to keep their eggs with them. Even if they don't lay eggs, dear pigeons." "But that's the egg that we are responsible for, the jumping aunt. Every faithful pigeon loves to be responsible."

"That's a possibility. But you don't want to keep the bird in the egg forever, do you?" "Well, if only I could keep it! Such a beautiful eggshell is like a new piece of silver. What kind of bird will hatch from the shell?" "A brand new little wallet!" said the aunt who was jumping up and down sharply, "Come on, give it to me." "Oh, jumping lady, you just took it away forever and ever? You think it didn't even know us when it hatched, and didn't even remember us," pleaded the brown-eyed pigeon. road. "Okay, okay, maybe some things can be thought of." Said the aunt who jumped up and down, "but it means you have to make sacrifices."

"What kind of sacrifice, hopping lady?" "You must shed your feathers, you must give up your wings, you must stop being birds and become two girls." "We are wretched!" said the two pigeons. "Well, of course," said the bouncing aunt, "but if you want, you can continue to take care of this egg until it doesn't need you. By then you will lose it, and you will have to endure it." All pain." "Then what comfort shall we have?" asked the two pigeons. "It remembers you sometimes, and weeps for its shell." "Cry for its beautiful silver shell!" cooed the brown-eyed dove.

"An empty shell is worthless even if it's silver," said the hopping lady. "But I'll give it as a present if I can," said the pigeon. "There's no doubt about that," said the hopping lady, "but you'll never do that. Though it will weep for its shell." She took the egg, broke it in half, and wrapped the tiny chick in her cloak so quickly that Anthony had no time to look.After a while, she flew out of the window and disappeared, while the two fat pigeons sat beside the broken silver shell, filled them with tears, and cooed their songs. sad.

"La-la-la!" sang the blue-eyed pigeon, "good-bye, our beautiful little room." "B-ba-ba!" sang the brown eye, "we'll never see you again." As they coo, their feathers begin to fall from their small, round calico bodies. No wonder he never saw pigeons going in and out of the hole!The holes had been empty long before he knew them. Over there is the house with the oval window. Anthony was delighted that the window was still there, and so were the frames of flowering vines.He thought there should be a photo in it.Probably just because that photo fell off.You know how often the pictures in mom's photo album tend to fall out.This window is like a picture frame in a photo album, those oval openings, and some flower-shaped decorations around it.look!Wasn't a faded six-inch photograph inserted in the window before him?He seemed to see two thin, beautiful hands protruding from the vines, inserting the photo.He also heard a soft voice saying: "This is your aunt Hanach, that was taken before you were born."

It was the face and figure of a young and beautiful woman, with a Roman nose, in the oval window.She wore a fine woolen scarf from Paisley, Scotland, in a stately manner, which hung over her shoulders.She also wore a puffed skirt with heavy ornaments on her arms and neck. But as he stared, Aunt Hanach's picture seemed to be replaced by that of Mr. Cantil, who sometimes lived in their house.In the picture he had a beard and was dressed as stylishly as ever.The photo was just below his knees, but Anthony was pretty sure he was wearing silk stockings. That picture gave way again to that of old Mr. Trestel.Then another photo quickly replaced that photo, some of his cousins, some of his cousins, some of his grandpa, grandma, grandpa, grandma, some of his uncle, uncle, some of his old friends, some of whom he had forgotten, and some of whom he still remembered , and his father... "Don't flip so fast!" Anthony shouted loudly... Turned to his mother again... "Stop, stop!" Anthony pleaded. But those photos are still flipping through one by one.It's as if someone is flipping through the pages of photos quickly, looking for the ones he most wants to find among them. "Whose photo?" Anthony wanted to know. "I don't know. I always thought it would be most fitting to have a special face there that might look out of that window one day." "Yes, so do I," said Anthony, "but who is it?" As he asked the question, a photo flashed up, a photo he had never seen in his thick family photo album.The face in that photograph had flashed before his eyes all his life.It was the face he had once seen through the footlights of the theater, the face he thought he had found now forever.oh!It was the face he had seen as a child in the water of the mill pond, the face of the princess who had slept there enchanted.But just as he looked at the face, it changed again, into the face of a little girl with wide-open gray eyes and dirty, unkempt hair braided at the ends of a braid. "It's you!" Anthony exclaimed. The child's eyes were fixed on him. "It's her!" The boy yelled aggrievedly, "Let's go. Come with me!" He went on. The trails became more and more familiar.The things we are most familiar with first, Anthony thought, are often the things we are most familiar with.They are the kindest things and the longest remembered things.We tend to walk away, towards things that are far away, things that used to be so far away from us.But those first familiar things will never leave, let alone be far away.We think we are away from them, but we take them with us without knowing it wherever we go, and when we return to where they came from, everything else recedes into the distance. The village before Anthony's was Anthony's own, and a few turns in the hills to Silly Belie's hut and the jumping aunt's hut; and the end of the trail Just walk into Mrs. Rimmer's flagstone kitchen.All these scenes, Anthony had promised himself before that he would see it.He can fly a kite for Silly Bielie and get a bag full of mushrooms; A bowl of plums with yellow cream in Medwick's gray-gabled farmhouse.But not now, not tonight.He has lingered too long on the road, and the eyes of the earth are waiting for him.