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Page 4
I do not remember ever to have been discovered in this retreat. I was
(by nature) prompt at meals, and wary to be in bed at my hour, however
transitory its occupation might be. Indeed, I very well recollect
dawn painting the page my eyes dwelt on, surprising me with its
mystery and stealth in a house as silent as the grave.
Thus entertained then by insubstantial society I grew up, and began to
be old, before I had yet learned age is disastrous. And it was there,
in that cold, bright chamber, one snowy twilight, first suddenly awoke
in me an imperative desire for distant lands.
Even while little else than a child I had begun to cast my mind to
travel. I doubt if ever Columbus suffered such vexation from an itch
to be gone.
But whither?
Now, it seemed clear to me after long brooding and musing that however
beautiful were these regions of which I never wearied to read, and
however wild and faithful and strange and lovely the people of the
books, somewhere the former must remain yet, somewhere, in immortality
serene, dwell they whom so many had spent life in dreaming of, and
writing about.
In fact, take it for all in all, what could these authors have been
at, if they laboured from dawn to midnight, from laborious midnight to
dawn, merely to tell of what never was, and never by any chance could
be? It was heaven-clear to me, solitary and a dreamer; let me but gain
the key, I would soon unlock that Eden garden-door. Somewhere yet, I
was sure, Imogen's mountains lift their chill summits into heaven;
over haunted sea-sands Ariel flits; at his webbed casement next the
stars Faust covets youth, till the last trump shall ring him out of
dream.
It was on a blue March morning, with all the trees of my aunt's woods
in a pale-green tumult of wind, that, quite unwittingly, I set out on
a journey that has not yet come to an end.
There was a hint in the air at my waking, I fancied, not quite of mere
earth, the perfume of the banners of Flora, of the mould where in
melting snow the crocus blows. I looked from my window, and the
western clouds drew gravely and loftily in the illimitable air towards
the whistling house. Strange trumpets pealed in the wind. Even my
poor, aged Aunt Sophia had changed with the universal change; her
great, solitary face reminded me of some long-forgotten April.
And a little before eleven I saddled my uncle's old mare Rosinante
(poor female jade to bear a name so glorious!), and rode out (as for
how many fruitless seasons I had ridden out!), down the stony,
nettle-narrowed path that led for a secret mile or more, beneath
lindens, towards the hills.
II
_Still thou art blest compared wi' me!_
--ROBERT BURNS.
It is to be wondered at that in so bleak a wind I could possibly fall
into reverie. But the habit was rooted deep in me; Rosinante was
prosaic and trustworthy; the country for miles around familiar to me
as the palm of my hand. Yet so deeply was I involved, and so steadily
had we journeyed on, that when at last I lifted my eyes with a great
sigh that was almost a sob, I found myself in a place utterly unknown
to me.
But more inexplicable yet, not only was the place strange, but, by
some incredible wizardry, Rosinante seemed to have carried me out of a
March morning, blue and tumultuous and bleak, into the grey, sweet
mist of a midsummer dawn.
I found that we were ambling languidly on across a green and level
moor. Far away, whether of clouds or hills I could not yet tell, rose
cold towers and pinnacles into the last darkness of night. Above us in
the twilight invisible larks climbed among the daybeams, singing as
they flew. A thick dew lay in beads on stick and stalk. We were alone
with the fresh wind of morning and the clear pillars of the East.
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