During that last week of August, after the Dales had left, “I wandered
lonely as a cloud.” Up to the eve of their departure I had been happier
than I had ever been in my life, but as soon as they were gone I became
a prey to sentimental regret. If Katherine had cared for me as I cared
for her I might have found more comfort; but she didn’t, and I was
perfectly aware of the fact. Mingled with it all was an increasing
dread of the new existence I already saw opening out before me. I
distrusted it: I had, indeed, that instinctive distrust of life itself,
which contemplates anything unknown with uneasiness, and clings with
passion to familiar faces and things.
When the day of my departure, a Saturday, came round, and I saw my
box all corded and ready in the hall, I felt extremely depressed. Now
that I had said good-bye to Mrs. Carroll it was as if I had cut myself
completely adrift from the past, and yet I believe I should have been
willing to go had I not been going to the McAllisters. The McAllisters
were our relations; the only ones I knew of. Aunt Margaret was my
father’s sister, and her husband kept a shop in a street called Cromac
Street. I had never been to their house, but they had been down a good
many times to visit us, and I did not care for them. There were four
children, and I disliked them all, except George, the eldest; and I
disliked Aunt Margaret in particular; while to Uncle George I was
indifferent, seeing that he did not very much count one way or the
other. But to live with them!...
Mrs. Carroll had wanted to send me to a school in England, but my
father would not permit this. He had an idea, and nothing would ever
shake it, that English public schools were dens of iniquity. This he
had gathered from some article that had appeared in a review, and from
the story “Eric.” I suppose he thought I should fall a particularly
easy victim to the temptations I might be submitted to; take, like the
boys in “Eric,” to drink, “little by little,” or even quite rapidly;
come home disgraced; at any rate he would not run the risk, when, by
sending me to the McAllisters, he could provide me with the “influence
of a religious home.” For Uncle George was religious, and so was Aunt
Margaret; and so, I supposed, were the children――George, at least, I
had been told, was a communicant――and it was the thought of all this
that now lay heavy on my soul.
I was not to go up to town till the afternoon, and as we sat down to
our early dinner I could not, though I knew it was absolutely useless,
refrain from again taking up the tabooed subject. I suggested how much
better it would be for me to go into lodgings of my own choosing. If
they were more expensive, Mrs. Carroll would not mind. “Whether she
would mind or not,” my father answered, “I should have thought you
would not have wanted to put her to any unnecessary expense.”
“But she wouldn’t mind doing it,” I repeated, obstinately. “She told
you she wanted to.”
“You know very well that is not the question,” my father said, more
coldly. “I have explained why I think it better that you should be
with those who will look after you. You are not old enough to be by
yourself.”
“I don’t like the McAllisters,” I answered, sullenly.
My father looked annoyed. “Perhaps you think they are not good enough
for you?”
“They certainly aren’t,” I replied.
It was a pity that our last meal together should have been somewhat
embittered by these remarks, but it was not altogether my fault. For
my father had been too extreme in his measures. Under the impression
that what I needed was to get into surroundings which would more or
less counteract the supposed relaxing influence of Mrs. Carroll’s
indulgence, he had arranged that I was not even to come home for
weekends, but was to submit myself during the entire term to the
bracing effect of the McAllister family.
No more was said upon the subject, and my father gave me after dinner
a little book, called “Daily Light,” which I promised to read every
night and morning. He came to the station to see me off, and, as we
were far too early, he was obliged to stand for a quarter of an hour
at the window of the carriage, while I longed for the train to start,
and we both tried hard to find something to say. I was tormented by an
uncertainty as to whether he would expect me to kiss him when I said
good-bye. At the sound of the guard’s whistle I thrust out my hand. We
shook hands; that was all; and, with the train beginning to move out of
the station, I sat back in the corner of the empty third-class carriage.
I had a sense of leaving everything behind me, as if I had been
starting for the world’s end; and, curiously enough, as much as, or
more than, by any human face, I was haunted by a vision of the house.
I had forsaken it, and I felt its low, faint call coming to me through
the rain. I could see the silent, closed rooms upstairs, the long
passage with its rows of brown portraits and the tall window at the
end, and it was as if a dust were dropping down upon these things,
covering them to sleep till I should return. The shadowy ghosts slipped
back into their picture-frames; gradually the life died out of their
eyes; and a cold, unbroken silence, like the chill of death, closed
over all that hidden under-world. Outside the apples had begun to
redden on the high brick walls of the fruit-garden, but within the
house all was frozen and lifeless. They were my spirits, my ghosts, and
could live only while I loved them. I loved them still, but I was too
far away, and I might not find them when I came back.
The landscape gliding past me showed through a fine, grayish mist. It
was cold, and I pulled up the windows, which almost immediately became
covered with the same mist that drifted in the air outside. I wondered
where Katherine was, and what she was doing. I had not heard from her,
though I had written twice. Then I lay back in my uncomfortable corner
and tried to think of nothing.