I LOSE MYSELF.
I have one incident more to relate ere my narrative begins to flow from a
quite clear memory.
I was by no means a small bookworm, neither spent all my time in the
enchanted ground of my uncle's study. It is true I loved the house, and
often felt like a burrowing animal that would rather not leave its hole;
but occasionally even at such times would suddenly wake the passion for
the open air: I must get into it or die! I was well known in the
farmyard, not to the men only, but to the animals also. In the absence of
human playfellows, they did much to keep me from selfishness. But far
beyond it I took no unfrequent flight--always alone. Neither Martha nor
my uncle ever seemed to think I needed looking after; and I am not aware
that I should have gained anything by it. I speak for myself; I have no
theories about the bringing up of children. I went where and when I
pleased, as little challenged as my uncle himself. Like him, I took now
and then a long ramble over the moor, fearing nothing, and knowing
nothing to fear. I went sometimes where it seemed as if human foot could
never have trod before, so wild and waste was the prospect, so unknown it
somehow looked. The house was built on the more sloping side of a high
hollow just within the moor, which stretched wide away from the very edge
of the farm. If you climbed the slope, following a certain rough country
road, at the top of it you saw on the one side the farm, in all the
colours and shades of its outspread, well tilled fields; on the other
side, the heath. If you went another way, through the garden, through the
belt of shrubs and pines that encircled it, and through the wilderness
behind that, you were at once upon the heath. If then you went as far as
the highest point in sight, wading through the heather, among the rocks
and great stones which in childhood I never doubted grew also, you saw
before you nothing but a wide, wild level, whose horizon was here and
there broken by low hills. But the seeming level was far from flat or
smooth, as I found on the day of the adventure I am about to relate. I
wonder I had never lost myself before. I suppose then first my legs were
able to wander beyond the ground with which my eyes were familiar.
It had rained all the morning and afternoon. When our last lesson was
over, my uncle went out, and I betook myself to the barn, where I amused
myself in the straw. By this time Rover must have gone back to his maker,
for I remember as with me a large, respectable dog of the old-fashioned
mastiff-type, who endured me with a patience that amounted almost to
friendliness, but never followed me about. When I grew hungry, I went
into the house to have my afternoon-meal. It was called tea, but I knew
nothing about tea, while in milk I was a connoisseur. I could tell
perfectly to which of the cows I was indebted for the milk I happened at
any time to be drinking: Miss Martha never allowed the milks of the
different cows to be mingled.
Just as my meal was over, the sun shone with sudden brilliance into my
very eyes. The storm was breaking up, and vanishing in the west. I threw
down my spoon, and ran, hatless as usual, from the house. The sun was on
the edge of the hollow; I made straight for him. The bracken was so wet
that my legs almost seemed walking through a brook, and my body through a
thick rain. In a moment I was sopping; but to be wet was of no
consequence to me. Not for many years was I able to believe that damp
could hurt.
When I reached the top, the sun was yet some distance above the horizon,
and I had gone a good way toward him before he went down. As he sank he
sent up a wind, which blew a sense of coming dark. The wind of the sunset
brings me, ever since, a foreboding of tears: it seems to say--“Your day
is done; the hour of your darkness is at hand.” It grew cold, and a
feeling of threat filled the air. All about the grave of the buried sun,
the clouds were angry with dusky yellow and splashes of gold. They
lowered tumulous and menacing. Then, lo! they had lost courage; their
bulk melted off in fierce vapour, gold and gray, and the sharp outcry of
their shape was gone. As I recall the airy scene, that horizon looks like
the void between a cataclysm and the moving afresh of the spirit of God
upon the face of the waters. I went on and on, I do not know why.
Something enticed me, or I was plunged in some meditation, then
absorbing, now forgotten, not necessarily worthless. I am jealous of
moods that can be forgotten, but such may leave traces in the character.
I wandered on. What ups and downs there were! how uneven was the surface
of the moor! The feet learned what the eyes had not seen.
All at once I woke to the fact that mountains hemmed me in. They looked
mountains, though they were but hills. What had become of home? where was
it? The light lingering in the west might surely have shown me the
direction of it, but I remember no west--nothing but a deep hollow and
dark hills. I was lost!
I was not exactly frightened at first. I knew no cause of dread. I had
never seen a tramp even; I had no sense of the inimical. I knew nothing
of the danger from cold and exposure. But awe of the fading light and
coming darkness awoke in me. I began to be frightened, and fear is like
other live things: once started, it grows. Then first I thought with
dismay, which became terror, of the slimy bogs and the deep pools in
them. But just as my heart was dying within me, I looked to the
hills--with no hope that from them would come my aid--and there, on the
edge of the sky, lifted against it, in a dip between two of the hills,
was the form of a lady on horseback. I could see the skirt of her habit
flying out against the clouds as she rode. Had she been a few feet lower,
so as to come between me and the side of the hill instead of the sky, I
should not have seen her; neither should I if she had been a few hundred
yards further off. I shrieked at the thought that she did not see me, and
I could not make her hear me. She started, turned, seemed to look whence
the cry could have come, but kept on her way. Then I shrieked in earnest,
and began to run wildly toward her. I think she saw me--that my quicker
change of place detached my shape sufficiently to make it discernible.
She pulled up, and sat like a statue, waiting me. I kept on calling as I
ran, to assure her I was doing my utmost, for I feared she might grow
impatient and leave me. But at last it was slowly indeed I staggered up
to her, spent. My foot caught, and as I fell, I clasped the leg of her
horse: I had no fear of animals more than of human beings. He was
startled, and rearing drew his leg from my arms. But he took care not to
come down on me. I rose to my feet, and stood panting.
What the lady said, or what I answered, I cannot recall. The next thing I
remember is stumbling along by her side, for she made her horse walk that
I might keep up with her. She talked a little, but I do not remember what
she said. It is all a dream now, a far-off one. It must have been like a
dream at the time, I was so exhausted. I remember a voice descending now
and then, as if from the clouds--a cold musical voice, with something in
it that made me not want to hear it. I remember her saying that we were
near her house, and would soon be there. I think she had found out from
me where I lived.
All the time I never saw her face: it was too dark. I do not think she
once spoke kindly to me. She said I had no business to be out alone; she
wondered at my father and mother. I think I was too tired to tell her I
had no father or mother. When I did speak, she indicated neither by sound
nor movement that she heard or heeded what I said. She sat up above me in
the dark, unpleasant, and all but unseen--a riddle which the troubled
child stumbling along by her horse's side did not want solved. Had there
been anything to call light, I should have run away from her. Vague
doubts of witches and ogresses crossed my mind, but I said to myself the
stories about them were not true, and kept on as best I could.
Before we reached the house, we had left the heath, and were moving along
lanes. The horse seemed to walk with more confidence, and it was harder
for me to keep up with him. I was so tired that I could not feel my legs.
I stumbled often, and once the horse trod on my foot. I fell; he went on;
I had to run limping after him. At last we stopped. I could see nothing.
The lady gave a musical cry. A voice and footsteps made answer; and
presently came the sound of a gate on its hinges. A long dark piece of
road followed. I knew we were among trees, for I heard the wind in them
over our heads. Then I saw lights in windows, and presently we stopped at
the door of a great house. I remember nothing more of that night.