When I commenced writing my story, I fancied myself so far removed from it that I could regard it as the story of another, capable of being viewed on all sides, and conjectured and speculated upon. And so I found it as long as the regions of childhood and youth detained me. But as I approach the middle scenes, I begin to fear the revival of the old torture; that, from the dispassionate reviewer, I may become once again the suffering actor. Long ago I read a strange story of a man condemned at periods unforeseen to act again, and yet again, in absolute verisimilitude each of the scenes of his former life: I have a feeling as if I too might glide from the present into the past without a sign to warn me of the coming transition.
One word more ere I pass to the middle events, those for the sake of which the beginning is and the end shall be recorded. It is this—that I am under endless obligations to Charley for opening my eyes at this time to my overweening estimate of myself. Not that he spoke—Charley could never have reproved even a child. But I could tell almost any sudden feeling that passed through him. His face betrayed it. What he felt about me I saw at once. From the signs of his mind, I often recognized the character of what was in my own; and thus seeing myself through him, I gathered reason to be ashamed; while the refinement of his criticism, the quickness of his perception, and the novelty and force of his remarks, convinced me that I could not for a moment compare with him in mental gifts. The upper hand of influence I had over him I attribute to the greater freedom of my training, and the enlarged ideas which had led my uncle to avoid enthralling me to his notions. He believed the truth could afford to wait until I was capable of seeing it for myself; and that the best embodiments of truth are but bonds and fetters to him who cannot accept them as such. When I could not agree with him, he would say with one of his fine smiles, ‘We’ll drop it, then, Willie. I don’t believe you have caught my meaning. If I am right, you will see it some day, and there’s no hurry.’ How could it be but Charlie and I should be different, seeing we had fared so differently! But, alas! my knowledge of his character is chiefly the result of after-thought.
I do not mean this manuscript to be read until after my death; and even then—although partly from habit, partly that I dare not trust myself to any other form of utterance, I write as if for publication—even then, I say, only by one. I am about to write what I should not die in peace if I thought she would never know; but which I dare not seek to tell her now for the risk of being misunderstood. I thank God for that blessed invention, Death, which of itself must set many things right, and gives a man a chance of justifying himself where he would not have been heard while alive. Lest my manuscript should fall into other hands, I have taken care that not a single name in it should contain even a side-look or hint at the true one; but she will be able to understand the real person in every case.
CHAPTER XXV. MY WHITE MARE.
I passed my final examinations with credit, if not with honour. It was not yet clearly determined what I should do next. My goal was London, but I was unwilling to go thither empty-handed. I had been thinking as well as reading a good deal; a late experience had stimulated my imagination; and at spare moments I had been writing a tale. It had grown to be a considerable mass of manuscript, and I was anxious, before going, to finish it. Hence, therefore, I returned home with the intention of remaining there quietly for a few months before setting-out to seek my fortune.
Whether my uncle in his heart quite favoured the plan, I have my doubts, but it would have been quite inconsistent with his usual grand treatment of me to oppose anything not wrong on which I had set my heart. Finding now that I took less exercise than he thought desirable, and kept myself too much to my room, he gave me a fresh proof of his unvarying kindness, He bought me a small grey mare of strength and speed. Her lineage was unknown; but her small head, broad fine chest, and clean limbs indicated Arab blood at no great remove. Upon her I used to gallop over the fields, or saunter along the lanes, dreaming and inventing.
And now certain feelings, too deeply rooted in my nature for my memory to recognize their beginnings, began to assume colour and condensed form, as if about to burst into some kind of blossom. Thanks to my education and love of study, also to a self-respect undefined yet restraining, nothing had occurred to wrong them. In my heart of hearts I worshipped the idea of womanhood. I thank Heaven, if ever I do thank for anything, that I still worship thus. Alas! how many have put on the acolyte’s robe in the same temple, who have ere long cast dirt upon the statue of their divinity, then dragged her as defiled from her lofty pedestal, and left her lying dishonoured at its foot! Instead of feeding with holy oil the lamp of the higher instinct, which would glorify and purify the lower, they feed the fire of the lower with vile fuel, which sends up its stinging smoke to becloud and blot the higher.
One lovely Spring morning, the buds half out, and the wind blowing fresh and strong, the white clouds scudding across a blue gulf of sky, and the tall trees far away swinging as of old, when they churned the wind for my childish fancy, I looked up from my book and saw it all. The gladness of nature entered into me, and my heart swelled so in my bosom that I turned with distaste from all further labour. I pushed my papers from me, and went to the window. The short grass all about was leaning away from the wind, shivering and showing its enamel. Still, as in childhood, the wind had a special power over me. In another moment I was out of the house and hastening to the farm for my mare. She neighed at the sound of my step. I saddled and bridled her, sprung on her back, and galloped across the grass in the direction of the trees.
In a few moments I was within the lodge gates, walking my mare along the gravelled drive, and with the reins on the white curved neck before me, looking up at those lofty pines, whose lonely heads were swinging in the air like floating but fettered islands. My head had begun to feel dizzy with the ever-iterated, slow, half-circular sweep, when, just opposite the lawn stretching from a low wire fence up to the door of the steward’s house, my mare shied, darted to the other side of the road, and flew across the grass. Caught thus lounging on my saddle, I was almost unseated. As soon as I had pulled her up, I turned to see what had startled her, for the impression of a white flash remained upon my mental sensorium. There, leaning on the little gate, looking much diverted, stood the loveliest creature, in a morning dress of white, which the wind was blowing about her like a cloud. She had no hat on, and her hair, as if eager to join in the merriment of the day, was flying like the ribbons of a tattered sail. A humanized Dryad!—one that had been caught young, but in whom the forest-sap still asserted itself in wild affinities with the wind and the swaying branches, and the white clouds careering across! Could it be Clara? How could it be any other than Clara? I rode back.