The sun still bright on the hilltop; figures rising to its crest, and
there halting, with hands shading their eyes, to take a glad or sad
look backward. Then, impelled by the master Time, they move downward
through deepening shades to join the great crowd in the bosky glen at
the foot of the mountain. Mingling in the crowd, they become themselves
shadows, making strange shapes in the beautiful garden ground where
they find rest.
But in that pause on the bright hilltop, in that look back along the
slope which has been climbed, there falls a mist from the eyes. There
is the straight easy road up to the height which we might have taken,
and there are the devious paths like the mazy involutions of the lines
on a railway map, which we have taken, and which have made the journey
appear so wearisome to many, so short to the happy few.
But all see what a much pleasanter road they could travel if they might
only start afresh with this new vision.
Old friends meet and exchange compliments about birthdays—some
accepting them contentedly, others regarding them as grim jokes which
would be honoured in the omission. But gay or sad, every one has in the
heart a plaintive note which sounds that monosyllable ‘IF!’
‘If I had only been advised at the right moment, how different it would
be with me now,’ sighs the pallid invalid, closing his eyes in vain and
trying to forget.
Then the sad-faced maiden:
‘If he had only trusted me a little more—if I had only doubted him
a little less, how sweet it would have been to have gone down this
hillside hand in hand together.’
‘If I could only have persuaded him not to make that last journey,’
murmurs the widow.
‘If my son had been spared,’ moans the childless.
‘If I had known his falsehood,’ bitterly exclaims the betrayed.
‘I wish the guv’nor’s cash had not gone so fast,’ mutters the
spendthrift, ‘and it might have lasted long enough to have made this an
easy slide, if I had only thought about it. Now I suppose it will be a
regular plunge.’
‘If I had only left off play before my luck turned,’ growls the gambler.
‘If I had left those shares alone I would have been all right,’ says
the bankrupt.
‘Looking back, sir, is seldom pleasant,’ says the successful man with
a complacent smile and with a wave of his hand patronising the whole
past, ‘but to me it is agreeable enough. The struggle was hard, sir,
hard; and if it had not been for untiring energy on my part—well, I
should not be where I am. But if I had it all to do over again, why, I
could double my fortune.’
But he is content enough to go gently down the slope in his carriage,
whilst others are tumbling or creeping down the same course bearing
that burden ‘If.’ The miserable ones know that their state would have
been more gracious if they could have seen the way more clearly; but
they have no wish to go back; they crawl voiceless over the hilltop, in
haste to reach the end of the journey.
‘Cheated of my due,’ the man of ambition cries; ‘but if there had been
a fair field for me I would have accomplished all my aims, and the
world would have been the gainer.’
‘Let us walk steadily on,’ says the philosopher gently, ‘and our
memories of the sunlit streaks on the other side will cheer us on our
way downward. There is no life that has not some pleasant memory that
will bring a sense of happiness to the most desolate—if it be not
thrust aside by vain repining. All men and women may be happy, if’——
Oh, that infinite ‘If!’