In the Days of My Youth: A Novel

by Amelia B. Edwards

"Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken."

I had that morning received by post a parcel of London papers and magazines, which, for a foolish reason of my own, I almost dreaded to open; so, putting off the evil hour, I thrust the ominous parcel into my pocket and went out to read it in some green solitude, far away among the lonely hills and tracts of furzy common that extend for miles and miles around my native place. It was a delicious autumn morning, bright and fresh and joyous as spring. The purple heather was all abloom along the slopes of the hill-sides. The golden sandcliffs glittered in the sun. The great firwoods reached away over heights and through valleys--"grand and spiritual trees," pointing ever upward with warning finger, like the Apostles in the old Italian pictures. Now I passed a solitary farm-yard where busy laborers were piling the latest stacks; now met a group of happy children gathering wild nuts and blackberries. By-and-by, I came upon a great common, with a picturesque mill standing high against the sky. All around and about stretched a vast prospect of woodland and tufted heath, bounded far off by a range of chalk-hills speckled with farm-houses and villages, and melting towards the west into a distance faint and far, and mystic as the horizon of a Turner.

Here I threw myself on the green turf and rested. Truly, Nature is a great "physician of souls." The peace of the place descended into my heart, and hushed for a while the voice of its repinings. The delicious air, the living silence of the woods, the dreamy influences of the autumnal sunshine, all alike served to lull me into a pleasant mood, neither gay nor sad, but very calm--calm enough for the purpose for which I had come. So I brought out my packet of papers, summoned all my philosophy to my aid, and met my own name upon the second page. For here was, as I had anticipated, a critique on my first volume of poems.

Indifference to criticism, if based upon a simple consciousness of moral right, is a noble thing. But indifference to criticism, taken in its ordinary, and especially its literary sense, is generally a very small thing, and resolves itself, for the most part, into a halting and one-sided kind of stoicism, meaning indifference to blame and ridicule, and never indifference to praise. It is very convenient to the disappointed authorling; very effective, in the established writer; but it is mere vanity at the root, and equally contemptible in both. For my part, I confess that I came to my trial as tremblingly as any poor caitiff to the fiery ordeal, and finding myself miraculously clear of the burning ploughshares, was quite as full of wonder and thankfulness at my good fortune. For I found my purposes appreciated, and my best thoughts understood; not, it is true, without some censure, but it was censure tempered so largely with encouragement that I drew hope from it, and not despondency. And then I thought of Hortense, and, picturing to myself all the joy it would have been to lay these things at her feet, I turned my face to the grass, and wept like a child.

Then, one by one, the ghosts of my dead hopes rose out of the grave of the past and vanished "into thin air" before me; and in their place came earnest aspirations, born of the man's strong will. I resolved to use wisely the gifts that were mine--to sing well the song that had risen to my lips--to "seize the spirit of my time," and turn to noble uses the God-given weapons of the poet. So should I be worthier of her remembrance, if she yet remembered me--worthier, at all events, to remember her.

Thus the hours ebbed, and when I at length rose and turned my face homeward, the golden day was already bending westward. Lower and lower sank the sun as the miles shortened; stiller and sweeter grew the evening air; and ever my lengthening shadow travelled before me along the dusty road--wherein I was more fortunate than the man in the German story who sold his to the devil.

It was quite dusk by the time I gained the outskirts of the town, and I reflected with much contentment upon the prospect of a cosy bachelor dinner, and, after dinner, lamplight and a book.

"If you please, sir," said Collins, "a lady has been here."

Collins--the same Collins who had been my father's servant when I was a boy at home--was now a grave married man, with hair fast whitening.

"A lady?" I echoed. "One of my cousins, I suppose, from Effingham."