The Quest of the Golden Girl | Page 4

indeed, were he
who would envy you one petal of that wonderful rose--Rosa
Mundi--God has given you to gather.
But, all the same, the reader will admit that it must be lonely for me,
and not another sister left to take pity on me, all somewhere happily
settled down in the Fortunate Isles.
Poor lonely old house! do you, too, miss the light step of your mistress?
No longer shall her little silken figure flit up and down your quiet
staircases, no more deck out your silent rooms with flowers, humming
the while some happy little song.

The little piano is dumb night after night, its candles unlighted, and
there is no one to play Chopin to us now as the day dies, and the
shadows stoop out of their corners to listen 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.
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