A Day of Fate | Page 5

bow. I could but barely catch a
glimpse of a ripple of hair that, perhaps, had not been smoothed with
sufficient pains, and thus seemed in league with the slightly worldly
bonnet. In brief, to my kindled fancy, her youth and loveliness

appeared the exquisite human embodiment of the June morning, with
its alternations of sunshine and shadow, its roses and their fragrance, of
its abounding yet untarnished and beautiful life.
No one in the meeting seemed moved save myself, but I felt as if I
could become a poet, a painter, and even a lover, under the inspiration
of that perfect profile.

CHAPTER II
A JUNE DAY-DREAM
Moment after moment passed, but we all sat silent and motionless.
Through the open windows came a low, sweet monotone of the wind
from the shadowing maples, sometimes swelling into a great depth of
sound, and again dying to a whisper, and the effect seemed finer than
that of the most skilfully touched organ. Occasionally an irascible
humble-bee would dart in, and, after a moment of motionless poise,
would dart out again, as if in angry disdain of the quiet people. In its
irate hum and sudden dartings I saw my own irritable fuming and
nervous activity, and I blessed the Friends and their silent meeting. I
blessed the fair June face, that was as far removed from the seething
turmoil of my world as the rosebuds under her home-windows.
Surely I had drifted out of the storm into the very haven of rest and
peace, and yet one might justly dread lest the beauty which bound my
eyes every moment in a stronger fascination should evoke an unrest
from which there might be no haven. Young men, however, rarely
shrink from such perils, and I was no more prudent than my fellows.
Indeed, I was inclining toward the fancy that this June day was the day
of destiny with me; and if such a creature were the remedy for my
misshapen life it would be bliss to take it.
In our sweet silence, broken only by the voice of the wind, the twitter
of birds beguiling perhaps with pretty nonsense the hours that would
otherwise seem long to their brooding mates on the nests, and the hum

of insects, my fancy began to create a future for the fair stranger--a
future, rest assured, that did not leave the dreamer a calm and
disinterested observer.
"This day," I said mentally, "proves that there is a kindly and
superintending Providence, and men are often led, like children in the
dark, to just the thing they want. The wisdom of Solomon could not
have led me to a place more suited to my taste and need than have my
blind, aimless steps; and before me are possibilities which suggest the
vista through which Eve was led to Adam."
My constant contact with men who were keen, self-seeking, and often
unscrupulous, inclined me toward cynicism and suspicion. My editorial
life made me an Arab in a sense, for if there were occasion, my hand
might be against any man, if not every man. I certainly received many
merciless blows, and I was learning to return them with increasing zest.
My column in the paper was often a tilting-ground, and whether or no I
inflicted wounds that amounted to much, I received some that long
rankled. A home such as yonder woman might make would be a better
solace than newspaper files. Such lips as these might easily draw the
poison from any wound the world could make. Wintry firelight would
be more genial than even June sunlight, if her eyes would reflect in into
mine. With such companionship, all the Gradgrinds in existence would
prose in vain; life would never lose its ideality, nor the world become a
mere combination of things. Her woman's fancy would embroider my
man's reason and make it beautiful, while not taking from its strength.
Idiot that I was, in imagining that I alone could achieve success!
Inevitably I could make but a half success, since the finer feminine
element would be wanting. Do I wish men only to read our paper? Am
I a Turk, holding the doctrine that women have no souls, no minds?
The shade of my mother forbid! Then how was I, a man, to interpret the
world to women? Truly, I had been an owl of the night, and blind to the
honest light of truth when I yielded to the counsel of ambition, that I
had no time for courtship and marriage. In my stupid haste I would try
to grope my way through subjects beyond a man's ken, rather than seek
some such guide as yonder maiden, whose intuitions would be unerring
when the light of reason failed. In theory, I held the doctrine