I began to feel what one is apt to learn too late, that in childhood one takes the happiness of home for granted, and kicks against the pricks of its grievances, not having felt the far harder buffetings of the world. Moreover (which one does not think of then), that parental blunders and injustices are the mistakes and tyrannies of a special love that one may go many a mile on one’s own wilful way and not meet a second time. Who—in the wide world—would care to be bothered with my confidence, and blame me for withholding it? Should I meet many people to whom it would matter if we misunderstood each other? Would anybody hereafter love me well enough to be
disappointed in me? Would other men care so much for my fate as to insist on guiding it by lines of their own ruling?
I pressed the gloves passionately against my eyes to keep in the tears. If my day-dreams had been the only question, I should have changed my mind now. If the home grievances had been all, I should have waited for time and patience to mend them. I could not have broken all these heart-strings. I should never have run away. But there was much more, and my convictions were not changed, though I felt as if I might have managed better as regards my father.
Would he forgive me? I hoped and believed so. Would my mother forgive me? I knew she would—as God forgives.
And with the thought of her, I knelt down, and put my head on the hall table and prayed from my soul—not for fair winds, and prosperous voyages, and good luck, and great adventures; but that it might please God to let me see Home again, and the faces that I loved, ah, so dearly, after all!
And then I got up, and crossed the threshold, and went out into the world.
END OF PART I.
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
London & Bungay.