This was my first experience of the heartlessness of the world; and, although it is an incident of every-day occurrence in all civilized communities, it was new to me at that time, and stung me to the soul.
After months of seclusion through the biting winter and spring, summer came round again, and I thought I would venture abroad, in hope that the air and a little activity and change of scene would recruit my health; for I was shattered and nervous, and conscious of a prostration of mind almost amounting to disease. The country round about was abrupt and wild, covered with heather for the most part, broken up and picturesque, and studded here and there with patches of bright verdure, invaded by clumps of forest trees. In some places it took a mountainous character, and brawling streams rushing through deep gorges and rocky glens assimilated the scenery to the general tone of the region that lies still farther to the north. The neighborhood was lonely and unfrequented; it resembled the hilly solitudes of Arran and Bute; there were few homesteads in the distant landscape to send up cheerful volumes of smoke among the trees: and you might ride a whole morning without meeting a wayfarer.
I was on horseback one day, passing leisurely in an idle mood out of the mouth of a ravine that led to an open valley, when I saw a lady, in a riding-habit, mounted at no great distance from me. Her horse was apparently picking his way slowly through the hillocks that dotted the surface of the sward. The appearance of a lady alone loitering in so unfrequented a spot surprised me. Had I seen an apparition I could not have been more astonished.
As she moved past toward the opposite side she turned her head, and her clear, pensive eyes, fell full upon my face with an expression of ineffable sweetness.
Where had I seen those features before? They seemed quite familiar to me. The dress, the action of her arm as she reined up her horse, and, above all, the sad beauty of her eyes, I could have protested I had seen a hundred times. Yet an instant's reflection would have sufficed to convince me that I was under a mistake, for visitors or friends like her there were none in our lonely house.
Her brief, quiet glance, had something in it of a look of recognition. I felt as if there was a recognition on both sides. I felt, too, or imagined, that she was slightly agitated by it. I knew that my own heart fluttered wildly. My solitary life had rendered me nervous, and the dangerous lore with which my head was filled gave to the incident an immediate coloring of romance. A new sensation had taken possession of me, a new world was opening to me; the solitude and remoteness of the place, and the unexpectedness of that vision rising up among the wild flowers and the dark green heather, acted like a charm upon me, and awakened me to a sense of bewildering delight I had never experienced before.
There is always an awkwardness in country places at rencounters between people who are unaccustomed to strangers. I hardly knew whether I should advance or retreat, and suffering my horse to take his own course, he carried me a little circuit behind a patch of trees that intervened between us. When I looked again she was gone. Scarcely a moment had elapsed, and she had vanished like a sunbow. I could hardly believe in a disappearance so miraculous, and rubbed my eyes, and gazed again and again over the vacant space before me. But she was nowhere to be seen. My curiosity was highly excited, and, dashing at full speed over the very spot she had so recently occupied, I traversed every outlet, but without success. It was broad noon. I knew all the bridle-tracks in and out of the valley, and it was impossible she could have taken any of them, and escaped my vigilant search in so short a time. What, then, was this form I had beheld? I had heard of Second Sight, and other visual deceptions—was this one of them? Had she melted into air? Had she come there only to mock me? Was I the victim of a self-delusion? The tortures of Tantalus were slight in comparison with the misery I felt as I rode round and round that sequestered dell, hoping in vain that she would return. But it was unlike any misery that had ever preyed upon me before. There was a strange thrill of expectation and uncertainty in it, and it pointed to an object in the future which, from that hour, gave me a novel interest in life. A total change had passed over me, and any change was welcome.
Every day I renewed my visit to the same place, but the nymph of my pilgrimage never returned to the spot where I had first beheld her. Under this disappointment fancy liberally supplied a picture which sustained and heightened my desire to gaze once more on the reality. By a mental process, of which I can give no further account than that it is very well known to all readers of romance who are endowed with faith and imagination, I culled the most lovable and fascinating qualities of a hundred heroines—the tenderness and devotion, gentleness and grace, of all the Amandas, Isidoras, and Ethelindas, my brain had become intimately acquainted with—and compiled out of them a suitable Ideal for the worship of my perturbed affections. Nor was I satisfied with creating this imaginary enchantress by a sweeping contribution from the special charms of all the fine heroines I had read of, but I must needs put her into every possible emergency that could show off her beauty and her virtues to advantage. I believe I made her run the gauntlet of more perilous adventures and extraordinary trials than ever befell any single heroine in the whole library of fiction.
I could not for an instant dismiss her from my thoughts; and that one look that had enthralled me was ever present to me. Even in sleep I was haunted by its disturbing influence, and the tantalizing scene in the valley was re-enacted, with sundry alterations and additions, over and over again in my dreams. As it had then become the sole occupation of my life to think of her, and to explore the country every day in search of her, it was not very wonderful that her image should have resolved itself into a settled illusion, possessing me so entirely that, in the image conjured up by my distempered imagination, I should at last believe that I actually saw before me that which I so cordially desired to see, and the seeing which was the object that engrossed me to the exclusion of all other pursuits. When one idea thus tyrannically absorbs the mind, the very monotony of its pressure is apt to overlay the reasoning faculties and coerce them into delusions. People mourning to excess over the dead have sometimes supposed that they saw them again "in their habit as they lived." Under the influence of great excitement, profound grief has done the work of fever; and assuredly there is a fever of the mind as well as of the body.
Thus it was that, laboring under this constant agony of desire, I saw that abstraction of all conceivable loveliness once more. She was seated in the library—in the very chair in which my mother died. I then little suspected that I was entranced by a phantom of my own making, and that the exquisite appearance that sat in my presence was of no more substance than a beam of light, into which outlines and colors of immortal beauty were infused by my heated fancy. I spoke to her—she turned aside, and raised her hand with a motion, as I thought, of surprise. Again I addressed her, and she rose, and passed noiselessly toward the door. I confess that, anxious as I was to detain her, and procure some explanation from her, my courage gave way at this movement, and I spoke no more; but I followed her with my eyes, trying to read the feeling that seemed to flit in hers. It was clear to me, ambiguous as its expression was, and difficult as it is to explain it. The melancholy smile that played over her features contained a history. There was love (of course, having created her, it was natural I should make her return my passion), intense love, darkened by some great sorrow, as if insuperable obstacles stood in its way, and turned it to despair. She retired to the door-way, and stood there for a moment in the attitude of leave-taking. She was not, I thought, to be lost thus, and perhaps forever—one effort, and I might yet preserve her. I advanced hastily to grasp her hand, but as I stretched out mine to touch it, a chill, not of fear, but awe, came upon me, and I stood looking helplessly upon the inexplicable magic of her departure. She did not leave me in the manner of one who fled from my approach, but rather as if she left me reluctantly and by constraint, slowly and lingeringly dissolving from my sight—like a bright cloud fainting from twilight into darkness.