“L'Ami Joseph ought to fill up that void,” said De Gabriac, laughing. “I think myself the very paragon of husbands to accede to the arrangement!”
Strange words were these for her to hear,—nor, indeed, could she penetrate their meaning; but Polly's cares at that moment gave little time for thought, for every detail of preparation was left to her. Raper, it is true, did his utmost to aid her; but already De Gabriac had assumed a manner of superiority and command towards Joe which greatly embarrassed Polly, and compelled her to use every means of keeping them apart.
Thus were they started on the sea of life: does it need much foresight to predict the voyage?
CHAPTER XXIII. A MOUNTAIN ADVENTURE
Why do we all refer to the period of boyhood as one of happiness? It is not that it had not its own sorrows, nor that they were really so light,—it is simply because it was the season of hope. In after-life, as deception after deception has checked us, when disappointment has dulled expectancy, we become more practical, less dreamy, and, alas! less happy. The possible and the probable of youth are not the possible and the probable of manhood, still less those of riper age. The realms of boyish fancy are as wide as the great ocean; and we revel in them in all the plenitude of unrestricted power. There is not a budding effort of intellect that we do not magnify to ourselves as the origin of future distinction. We exalt our feats of strength and courage into deeds of heroic daring; and we fancy that the little struggles and crosses we meet with are like the great trials and reverses of after-life; and in our pride of success, we deem ourselves conquerors. Oh for one day, for even one short hour, of that time of glorious delusions! Oh that I could once more look out upon the world as one gazes at a sunset at sea, wondering what beauteous lands lie afar off in the distance, and imagining the time when we should be journeying towards them, buoyant, high-hearted, hopeful! Who has ever achieved any success that equalled his boyish ambitions? Who has ever been as great or as good as his early visions have pictured him?
I have already told my reader that my youth was not passed in affluence. Our means were limited to the very merest requirements of existence; our food and our clothing were humble as our dwelling; and I believe that many a sore privation was needed to escape the calamity of debt. Of all these hardships I knew nothing at the time; my experience pointed out none who seemed to possess an existence happy as my own. I had all that unvarying affection and devoted love could bestow. My little turret in winter, the fields and the mountains in summer, made up a glorious world, full of interest; and the days seemed never long enough for all my plans of pleasure.
I had no companions of my own age, nor did I feel the want of them; for when my school hours were over I was free to follow the caprices of my own fancy. There was in my isolation a sort of independence that I gloried in. To be alone with my own day-dreams—my own ambitious hopes—my own high-soaring thoughts—was an ecstasy of delight that I would not have exchanged for any companionship. The very indulgence of these humors soon rendered me unsuited for association with others, whose ideas and habits appeared to me to be all vain, and trifling, and contemptible. The books of travel and discovery which I loved to read, had filled my mind with those stories of adventure which attend the explorer of unknown lands,—the wonders of scenery, and the strange pictures of life and people. There was in the career itself that blending of heroism and philanthropy, that mingled courage and humanity, which appealed to my heart by its very strongest sympathies; and I felt for these noble and devoted adventurers not less admiration than love. All my solitary rambles through the wild valleys of the neighborhood, all my lonely walks over mountains, were in imitation of these wanderers, whose hardships I envied, and whose perils I longed to share. Not a rugged crag nor snow-capped summit that I did not name after some far-away land; and every brook and rippling stream became to me the Nile, the Euphrates, or the Ganges. The desolate character of the scenery amidst which we lived, the wide tracts of uninhabited country, favored these illusions; and for whole days long not an incident would occur to break the spell which fancy had thrown around me.
My kind mother—for so Polly always taught me to call her—seemed to take delight in favoring these self-delusions of mine, and fell readily into all my caprices about locality.
She made me, too, with her own hands, a little knapsack to wear; bought me an iron-shod staff such as Alpine travellers carry; and made me keep a kind of journal of these wanderings, noting down all my accidents and adventures, and recording even the feelings which beset me when afar off and alone in the mountains. So intent did I become at last on these imaginings that the actual life of school and its duties grew to seem visionary and unreal, and my true existence to be that when wandering through the lonely valleys of the Alps, or sitting in solitude in some far-away gorge of the mountains.