And yet again I pause--long after these last words were written--to look
back across the intervening years at that young woman. What, indeed, was
her insane mind seeking: what assurance, reconciliation? I know not, but
there she herself was found, nails worn to the quick, feet shoeless, a
hunted anatomy. Her fret and fever were to pass away; but what has all
this experience done for me?--that wildest, happiest, cruellest,
dearest, blackest twelve-month of my life? One more unanswerable
question. But, thank God, I live on; have even finished the task I set
myself; and in spite of fits and moods of depression, distaste, and
weariness, have been happy in it. Even when most contemptuous and
ashamed of myself, I have still found comfort in the belief that truth
is a wholesome medicine, though in essence it be humanly unattainable.
And my work has taught me this too--not to fret so foolishly as once I
did, at being small and insignificant in body; to fear a great deal more
remaining pygmy-minded, and pygmy-spirited. I used to try to set myself
against the World--but no need to enter further into that. We _cannot_
see ourselves as others see us, but that is no excuse for not wearing
spectacles; and even up here, in my peaceful lonely old Stonecote, I
must beware of a mind swept and garnished. Moreover my hour must come
again: and his.
That being so, of this I am certain; that it will be impossible to free
myself, to escape from this world, unless in peace and amity I can take
every shred of it, every friend and every enemy, all that these eyes
have seen, these senses discovered with me. I _know_ that. And perhaps
for that very reason, in spite of the loving gratitude that overcomes me
at the thought of what my existence might have been, I sometimes dread
the ease and quiet and seclusion in which I live. And this tale itself?
As Mrs Monnerie had said, what is it but once more to have drifted into
being on show again--in a book? That is so; and so I must leave it,
hoping against hope that one friend at any rate will consent in his love
and wisdom to take me seriously, and to remember me, not with scorn or
even with pity, but as if, life for life, we had shared the world on
equal terms.