"Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall," is a good
and safe maxim in other senses than the theological, for it goes to the
very root of human nature.
Here was a man in the zenith of his strength, at an age when the fire of
youth would be tempered and steeled by rare physical powers of
endurance; a man to whose lot had befallen stirring and eventful
experiences beyond the lot of most men, and in befalling had hardened; a
man of cool judgment and keen, clear, reasoning powers far beyond his
years; a man to whom the other sex would accord a full share of
attention, and who hitherto has been utterly unsusceptible to any such
excusable weakness, has hitherto never known a quickened pulse in
response to soft glance or welcoming smile. And this man has now
surrendered at sight--absolutely, and without the smallest reservation.
And it had all come about in a single day.
Just so. It is your apparent icicle that annihilates itself with the
most startling rapidity when suddenly touched by the scorching beam of
the unlooked-for sun. It is the unsusceptible one who goes down
forehead to the earth, not pausing to spread rug or carpet in the way,
when the self-constituted idol appears. And oh, how frequently too, not
the feet only, but the head, the hands, and the heart of the image prove
to be of the veriest clay!
To-morrow!
Who among us ever gives a thought to this commonplace word? Not, I
mean, when we are passing through some momentous crisis of our lives,
some care, some expectation for good or for ill, which may either make
us, or crush us well-nigh out of existence. Not then, but when our
lives are flowing on, smooth and undisturbed, then it is that we
practically ignore the possibility of to-morrow bringing with it
anything eventful, or being, in short, other than a mere twenty-four
hours' repetition of to-day.
To-morrow!
We go to bed lightly with the word on our lips, our arrangements for it
are all mapped out, all ordered for the next twenty-four hours, ay, and
beyond them, as though there existed not in the sublime philosophy of
the Wise King that most portentous of all warnings: "Boast not thyself
of the morrow, for thou canst not tell what a day may bring forth."
For an exemplification of both warnings behold it perfected in him who
rides abroad this morning. A single day, and his life has been cut into
two halves. Nor is it even a day that has wrought this change, nor yet
an hour, nor a minute. A moment, a brief flash of time, just so long as
that presence took to appear before him, and he was conquered. One
look, and he fell prostrate, to rise again a slave. And this man, till
the day before yesterday, had not a care in the world.
He rides slowly on. On the high ground which will directly shut the
homestead out of sight, he turns for a moment to gaze upon the quiet old
place sleeping embowered in trees; to gaze upon it with a lingering and
reverential gaze, as pilgrim taking a last look at some deeply venerated
shrine. Then he urges his horse along a narrow track which leads down
into the wildest part of the farm. Dark bush covers the valley on
either hand, broken only by a beetling _krantz_, frowning down as it
were upon great jagged rocks which, hurled at some remote period from
its face, lie embedded beneath. Yonder, in a sequestered glade, a
couple of spans of fine trek-oxen are grazing, the sun glistening on
their sleek hides; a bushbuck ewe stalks timidly across an open
clearing, and the alarmed note of a pheasant sounds close to the
horseman; but he who rides abroad thus early is neither on business bent
nor on the pleasures of the chase. He is only thinking--ruminating.
Mechanically his hand grasps the reins, as his steed, which he makes no
attempt to guide, steps briskly out, skilfully avoiding the sweeping
boughs which here and there overhang the path. Monkeys grin and gibber
at him among the branches, and a large secretary bird floats away from
its nest of sticks hard by. In the dewy webs which quiver from the
sprays of the bushes, and sparkle in the sun like strings of gems, he
reads but one name, one name written as it were, in delicate gossamer
characters, and the breaths of morning in this fresh cool retreat are
fraught with a faint but thrilling harmony--the music of low, tuneful
notes which are something more than a recollection, so clearly present
are they in the fancy of the thinker.
Then he ponders over the three months which have slipped by in such
calm, easy fashion since he cast in his lot here, and found among these
kindly and genial friends a home in its best and truest sense. It seems
to him a marvellous thing that he could have enjoyed, so much
contentment until this new star suddenly blazed forth in the firmament
of his life. He was not susceptible, never had been. How much had not
he and Ethel Brathwaite been thrown together, for instance! Ethel with
her sunny spirits and laughing, wayward moods, and her capacity for
working havoc among his own sex. They had been thrown daily, hourly,
together, from sheer force of circumstances, yet never a pulse of his
had been stirred in the faintest degree by any spell of hers.
"Too soon."
He is again seated in imagination by the moonlit pool while that shade
of unhappy recollection steals across his companion's beautiful face.
Again the longing is upon him to clear up the mystery and learn his own
fate. In but a couple of days! Ridiculous! And half aloud he utters
his thoughts:
"Too soon!"