The Quest of the Golden Girl | Page 4

in vain. Old house, old house! We are alone, quite alone,--there is no mistake about that,--and the soul has gone out of both of us. And as for the garden, there is no company there; that is loneliest of all. The very sunlight looks desolation, falling through the thick-blossoming apple-trees as through the chinks and crevices of deserted Egyptian cities.
While as for the books--well, never talk to me again about the companionship of books! For just when one needs them most of all they seem suddenly to have grown dull and unsympathetic, not a word of comfort, not a charm anywhere in them to make us forget the slow-moving hours; whereas, when Margaret was here--but it is of no use to say any more! Everything was quite different when Margaret was here: that is enough. Margaret has gone away to the Fortunate Isles. Of course she'll come to see us now and again; but it won't be the same thing. Yes! old echoing silent House of Joy that is Gone, we are quite alone. Now, what is to be done?
CHAPTER II
IN WHICH I DECIDE TO GO ON PILGRIMAGE
Though I have this bad habit of soliloquising, and indeed am absurd enough to attempt conversation with a house, yet the reader must realise from the beginning that I am still quite a young man. I talked a little just now as though I were an octogenarian. Actually, as I said, I am but just gone thirty, and I may reasonably regard life, as the saying is, all before me. I was a little down-hearted when I wrote yesterday. Besides, I wrote at the end of the afternoon, a melancholy time. The morning is the time to write. We are all--that is, those of us who sleep well--optimists in the morning. And the world is sad enough without our writing books to make it sadder. The rest of this book, I promise you, shall be written of a morning. This book! oh, yes, I forgot!--I am going to write a book. A book about what? Well, that must be as God wills. But listen! As I lay in bed this morning between sleeping and waking, an idea came riding on a sunbeam into my room,--a mad, whimsical idea, but one that suits my mood; and put briefly, it is this: how is it that I, a not unpresentable young man, a man not without accomplishments or experience, should have gone all these years without finding that
"Not impossible she Who shall command my heart and me,"--
without meeting at some turning of the way the mystical Golden Girl,--without, in short, finding a wife?
"Then," suggested the idea, with a blush for its own absurdity, "why not go on pilgrimage and seek her? I don't believe you'll find her. She isn't usually found after thirty. But you'll no doubt have good fun by the way, and fall in with many pleasant adventures."
"A brave idea, indeed!" I cried. "By Heaven, I will take stick and knapsack and walk right away from my own front door, right away where the road leads, and see what happens. "And now, if the reader please, we will make a start.
CHAPTER III
AN INDICTMENT OF SPRING
"Marry! an odd adventure!" I said to myself, as I stepped along in the spring morning air; for, being a pilgrim, I was involuntarily in a mediaeval frame of mind, and "Marry! an odd adventure!" came to my lips as though I had been one of that famous company that once started from the Tabard on a day in spring.
It had been the spring, it will be remembered, that had prompted them to go on pilgrimage; and me, too, the spring was filling with strange, undefinable longings, and though I flattered myself that I had set out in pursuance of a definitely taken resolve, I had really no more freedom in the matter than the children who followed at the heels of the mad piper.
A mad piper, indeed, this spring, with his wonderful lying music,--ever lying, yet ever convincing, for when was Spring known to keep his word? Yet year after year we give eager belief to his promises. He may have consistently broken them for fifty years, yet this year he will keep them. This year the dream will come true, the ship come home. This year the very dead we have loved shall come back to us again: for Spring can even lie like that. There is nothing he will not promise the poor hungry human heart, with his innocent-looking daisies and those practised liars the birds. Why, one branch of hawthorn against the sky promises more than all the summers of time can pay, and a pond ablaze with yellow lilies awakens such answering splendours and enchantments in mortal bosoms,--blazons, it would seem, so august a