One day at noontide, when the sun had burst suddenly out of a cloud,
and threatened to dissolve me, I looked round for shelter, whether of
tavern, cottage, barn, or shady tree. The first which offered itself
was a wood,—not a forest, but a trim plantation of young oaks, growing
just thick enough to keep the mass of sunshine out, while they admitted
a few straggling beams, and thus produced the most cheerful gloom
imaginable. A brook, so small and clear, and apparently so cool, that I
wanted to drink it up, ran under the road through a little arch of
stone without once meeting the sun in its passage from the shade on one
side to the shade on the other. As there was a stepping-place over the
stone wall and a path along the rivulet, I followed it and discovered
its source,—a spring gushing out of an old barrel.
In this pleasant spot I saw a light pack suspended from the branch of a
tree, a stick leaning against the trunk, and a person seated on the
grassy verge of the spring, with his back towards me. He was a slender
figure, dressed in black broadcloth, which was none of the finest nor
very fashionably cut. On hearing my footsteps he started up rather
nervously, and, turning round, showed the face of a young man about my
own age, with his finger in a volume which he had been reading till my
intrusion. His book was evidently a pocket Bible. Though I piqued
myself at that period on my great penetration into people’s characters
and pursuits, I could not decide whether this young man in black were
an unfledged divine from Andover, a college student, or preparing for
college at some academy. In either case I would quite as willingly have
found a merrier companion; such, for instance, as the comedian with
whom Gil Blas shared his dinner beside a fountain in Spain.
After a nod, which was duly returned, I made a goblet of oak-leaves,
filled and emptied it two or three times, and then remarked, to hit the
stranger’s classical associations, that this beautiful fountain ought
to flow from an urn instead of an old barrel. He did not show that he
understood the allusion, and replied very briefly, with a shyness that
was quite out of place between persons who met in such circumstances.
Had he treated my next observation in the same way, we should have
parted without another word.
“It is very singular,” said I,—“though doubtless there are good reasons
for it,—that Nature should provide drink so abundantly, and lavish it
everywhere by the roadside, but so seldom anything to eat. Why should
not we find a loaf of bread on this tree as well as a barrel of good
liquor at the foot of it?”
“There is a loaf of bread on the tree,” replied the stranger, without
even smiling—at a coincidence which made me laugh. “I have something to
eat in my bundle; and, if you can make a dinner with me, you shall be
welcome.”
“I accept your offer with pleasure,” said I. “A pilgrim such as I am
must not refuse a providential meal.”
The young man had risen to take his bundle from the branch of the tree,
but now turned round and regarded me with great earnestness, coloring
deeply at the same time. However, he said nothing, and produced part of
a loaf of bread and some cheese, the former being evidently home baked,
though some days out of the oven. The fare was good enough, with a real
welcome, such as his appeared to be. After spreading these articles on
the stump of a tree, he proceeded to ask a blessing on our food, an
unexpected ceremony, and quite an impressive one at our woodland table,
with the fountain gushing beside us and the bright sky glimmering
through the boughs; nor did his brief petition affect me less because
his embarrassment made his voice tremble. At the end of the meal he
returned thanks with the same tremulous fervor.
He felt a natural kindness for me after thus relieving my necessities,
and showed it by becoming less reserved. On my part, I professed never
to have relished a dinner better; and, in requital of the stranger’s
hospitality, solicited the pleasure of his company to supper.
“Where? At your home?” asked he.
“Yes,” said I, smiling.
“Perhaps our roads are not the same,” observed he.
“O, I can take any road but one, and yet not miss my way,” answered I.
“This morning I breakfasted at home; I shall sup at home to-night; and
a moment ago I dined at home. To be sure, there was a certain place
which I called home; but I have resolved not to see it again till I
have been quite round the globe and enter the street on the east as I
left it on the west. In the mean time, I have a home everywhere, or
nowhere, just as you please to take it.”
“Nowhere, then; for this transitory world is not our home,” said the
young man, with solemnity. “We are all pilgrims and wanderers; but it
is strange that we two should meet.”
I inquired the meaning of this remark, but could obtain no satisfactory
reply. But we had eaten salt together, and it was right that we should
form acquaintance after that ceremony as the Arabs of the desert do,
especially as he had learned something about myself, and the courtesy
of the country entitled me to as much information in return. I asked
whither he was travelling.
“I do not know,” said he; “but God knows.”
“That is strange!” exclaimed I; “not that God should know it, but that
you should not. And how is your road to be pointed out?”
“Perhaps by an inward conviction,” he replied, looking sideways at me
to discover whether I smiled; “perhaps by an outward sign.”
“Then, believe me,” said I, “the outward sign is already granted you,
and the inward conviction ought to follow. We are told of pious men in
old times who committed themselves to the care of Providence, and saw
the manifestation of its will in the slightest circumstances, as in the
shooting of a star, the flight of a bird, or the course taken by some
brute animal. Sometimes even a stupid ass was their guide. May I not be
as good a one?”
“I do not know,” said the pilgrim, with perfect simplicity.
We did, however, follow the same road, and were not overtaken, as I
partly apprehended, by the keepers of any lunatic asylum in pursuit of
a stray patient. Perhaps the stranger felt as much doubt of my sanity
as I did of his, though certainly with less justice, since I was fully
aware of my own extravagances, while he acted as wildly, and deemed it
heavenly wisdom. We were a singular couple, strikingly contrasted, yet
curiously assimilated, each of us remarkable enough by himself, and
doubly so in the other’s company. Without any formal compact, we kept
together day after day till our union appeared permanent. Even had I
seen nothing to love and admire in him, I could never have thought of
deserting one who needed me continually; for I never knew a person; not
even a woman, so unfit to roam the world in solitude as he was,—so
painfully shy, so easily discouraged by slight obstacles, and so often
depressed by a weight within himself.
I was now far from my native place, but had not yet stepped before the
public. A slight tremor seized me whenever I thought of relinquishing
the immunities of a private character, and giving every man, and for
money too, the right which no man yet possessed, of treating me with
open scorn. But about a week after contracting the above alliance I
made my bow to an audience of nine persons, seven of whom hissed me in
a very disagreeable manner, and not without good cause. Indeed, the
failure was so signal that it would have been mere swindling to retain
the money, which had been paid on my implied contract to give its value
of amusement. So I called in the doorkeeper, bade him refund the whole
receipts, a mighty sum and was gratified with a round of applause by
way of offset to the hisses. This event would have looked most horrible
in anticipation,—a thing to make a man shoot himself, or run amuck, or
hide himself in caverns where he might not see his own burning blush;
but the reality was not so very hard to bear. It is a fact that I was
more deeply grieved by an almost parallel misfortune which happened to
my companion on the same evening. In my own behalf I was angry and
excited, not depressed; my blood ran quick, my spirits rose buoyantly,
and I had never felt such a confidence of future success and
determination to achieve it as at that trying moment. I resolved to
persevere, if it were only to wring the reluctant praise from my
enemies.
Hitherto I had immensely underrated the difficulties of my idle trade;
now I recognized that it demanded nothing short of my whole powers
cultivated to the utmost, and exerted with the same prodigality as if I
were speaking for a great party or for the nation at large on the floor
of the Capitol. No talent or attainment could come amiss; everything,
indeed, was requisite,—wide observation, varied knowledge, deep
thoughts, and sparkling ones; pathos and levity, and a mixture of both,
like sunshine in a raindrop; lofty imagination, veiling itself in the
garb of common life; and the practised art which alone could render
these gifts, and more than these, available. Not that I ever hoped to
be thus qualified. But my despair was no ignoble one; for, knowing the
impossibility of satisfying myself, even should the world be satisfied,
I did my best to overcome it; investigated the causes of every defect;
and strove, with patient stubbornness, to remove them in the next
attempt. It is one of my few sources of pride, that, ridiculous as the
object was, I followed it up with the firmness and energy of a man.
I manufactured a great variety of plots and skeletons of tales, and
kept them ready for use, leaving the filling up to the inspiration of
the moment; though I cannot remember ever to have told a tale which did
not vary considerably from my preconceived idea, and acquire a novelty
of aspect as often as I repeated it. Oddly enough, my success was
generally in proportion to the difference between the conception and
accomplishment. I provided two or more commencements and catastrophes
to many of the tales,—a happy expedient, suggested by the double sets
of sleeves and trimmings which diversified the suits in Sir Piercy
Shafton’s wardrobe. But my best efforts had a unity, a wholeness, and a
separate character that did not admit of this sort of mechanism.