“Then we’ll say good-bye,” they said, “till to-morrow.”
“Yes, till to-morrow,” I said, “to-morrow morning.”
“Then we’ll say good-bye,” they said, “till to-morrow morning.”
Nor did I fail to keep the appointment, though little did I dream, as I groped for the door, that not even yet had I been called upon to face the ultimate temperature of my refining fire. For hardly had I arrived, somewhat fresher than I expected, at the garden gate of Mon Repos when there staggered up to it a railway omnibus, congested to the limit of its legal capacity. Deformed with luggage and distended with females, a single glance was sufficient to paralyse me, though less on my own account than on that of my father, who now stood transfixed on the doorstep. Then he gave a small cry of the extremest pathos, and as my mother’s eight sisters descended to the pavement, he fell forward upon the garden path, never to rise again.
But it was too much even for me, shaken as I had been to my very foundations, and turning my back and covering my eyes from that hurrying, Welsh-speaking female flood, I fell forward parallel to my father, though with my head in the opposite direction.
CHAPTER XIX
Commencement of my life’s afternoon. My father’s eight sisters-in-law return to Wales. Astounding attitude of my mother. Physical effect thereof on myself. I move to Stoke Newington. Further parochial activities. Simeon Whey obtains a living. I move to Hornsey and become a Churchwarden. Complete decline of Ezekiel Stool. Birth of my son. A happy augury.
Yes, I fell down; Nature could stand no more; and a discerning Providence, relenting at last, mercifully granted me a moment’s oblivion while my mother’s eight sisters swept over me. But I was never to be the same man again; and I have always regarded that unconscious moment as definitely conducting me into what has happily proved the long afternoon of my life. For it must not be thought that I am repining, or that, looking back over the intervening years, I am anything but grateful for that final ordeal, through which my character was required to pass. On the contrary—post tenebras lux[[16]]—as I have often remarked to my wife and her sisters, I can only thank Heaven that I was considered worthy of so prolonged and fierce a discipline.
[16]. After darkness light.