that meeting, that revival, must have been late in november or early in december. already by that time i had met your mother. i write to you, little son, not to you as you are now, but to the man you are someday to be. i write to understand myself, and, so far as i can understand, to make you understand. so that i want you to go back with me for a time into the days before your birth, to think not of that dear spirit of love who broods over you three children, that wise, sure mother who rules your life, but of a young and slender girl, rachel more, younger then than you will be when at last this story comes into your hands. for unless you think of her as being a girl, if you let your present knowledge of her fill out this part in our story, you will fail to understand the proportions of these two in my life. so i shall write of her here as rachel more, as if she were someone as completely dissociated from yourself as lady mary; as if she were someone in the story of my life who had as little to do with yours.
i had met her in september. the house my father lived in is about twelve miles away from your mother's home at ridinghanger, and i was taken over by percy restall in his motor-car. restall had just become a convert to this new mode of locomotion, and he was very active with a huge, malignant-looking french car that opened behind, and had a kind of poke bonnet and all sorts of features that have since disappeared from the automobile world. he took everyone that he could lay hands upon for rides,—he called it extending their range, and he called upon everyone else to show off the car; he was responsible for more introduction and social admixture in that part of surrey than had occurred during the previous century. we punctured in the ridinghanger drive, restall did his own repairs, and so it was we stayed for nearly four hours and instead of a mere caller i became a familiar friend of the family.
your mother then was still not eighteen, a soft white slip of being, tall, slender, brown-haired and silent, with very still deep dark eyes. she and your three aunts formed a very gracious group of young women indeed; alice then as now the most assertive, with a gay initiative and a fluent tongue; molly already a sun-brown gipsy, and norah still a pig-tailed thing of lank legs and wild embraces and the pinkest of swift pink blushes; your uncle sidney, with his shy lank moodiness, acted the brotherly part of a foil. there were several stray visitors, young men and maidens, there were always stray visitors in those days at ridinghanger, and your grandmother, rosy and bright-eyed, maintained a gentle flow of creature comforts and kindly but humorous observations. i do not remember your grandfather on this occasion; probably he wasn't there.
there was tea, and we played tennis and walked about and occasionally visited restall, who was getting dirtier and dirtier, and crosser and crosser at his repairs, and spreading a continually more remarkable assemblage of parts and instruments over the grass about him. he looked at last more like a pitch in the caledonian market than a decent country gentleman paying an afternoon call. and then back to more tennis and more talk. we fell into a discussion of tariff reform as we sat taking tea. two of the visitor youths were strongly infected by the new teachings which were overshadowing the outlook of british imperialism. some mean phrase about not conquering africa for the german bagman, some ugly turn of thought that at a touch brought down empire to the level of a tradesman's advantage, fell from one of them, and stirred me to sudden indignation. i began to talk of things that had been gathering in my mind for some time.
i do not know what i said. it was in the vein of my father's talk no doubt. but i think that for once i may have been eloquent. and in the midst of my demand for ideals in politics that were wider and deeper than artful buying and selling, that looked beyond a vulgar aggression and a churl's dread and hatred of foreign things, while i struggled to say how great and noble a thing empire might be, i saw rachel's face. this, it was manifest, was a new kind of talk to her. her dark eyes were alight with a beautiful enthusiasm for what i was trying to say, and for what in the light of that glowing reception i seemed to be.
i felt that queer shame one feels when one is taken suddenly at the full value of one's utmost expressions. i felt as though i had cheated her, was passing myself off for something as great and splendid as the empire of my dreams. it is hard to dissociate oneself from the fine things to which one aspires. i stopped almost abruptly. dumbly her eyes bade me go on, but when i spoke again it was at a lower level....
that look in rachel's eyes remained with me. my mind had flashed very rapidly from the realization of its significance to the thought that if one could be sure of that, then indeed one could pitch oneself high. rachel, i felt, had something for me that i needed profoundly, without ever having known before that i needed it. she had the supreme gifts of belief and devotion; in that instant's gleam it seemed she held them out to me.
never before in my life had it seemed credible to me that anyone could give me that, or that i could hope for such a gift of support and sacrifice. love as i had known it had been a community and an alliance, a frank abundant meeting; but this was another kind of love that shone for an instant and promised, and vanished shyly out of sight as i and rachel looked at one another.
some interruption occurred. restall came, i think, blackened by progress, to drink a cup of tea and negotiate the loan of a kitchen skewer. a kitchen skewer it appeared was all that was needed to complete his reconstruction in the avenue. norah darted off for a kitchen skewer, while restall drank. and then there was a drift to tennis, and rachel and i were partners. all this time i was in a state of startled attention towards her, full of this astounding impression that something wonderful and unprecedented had flowed out from her towards my life, full too of doubts now whether that shining response had ever occurred, whether some trick of light and my brain had not deceived me. i wanted tremendously to talk to her, and did not know how to begin in any serious fashion. beyond everything i wanted to see again that deep onset of belief....
"come again," said your grandmother to me, "come again!" after she had tried in vain to make restall stay for an informal supper. i was all for staying, but restall said darkly, "there are the lamps."
"but they will be all right," said mrs. more.
"i can't trust 'em," said restall, with a deepening gloom. "not after that." the motor-car looked self-conscious and uncomfortable, but said nothing by way of excuse, and restall took me off in it like one whose sun has set for ever. "i wouldn't be surprised," said restall as we went down the drive, "if the damned thing turned a somersault. it might do—anything." those were the brighter days of motoring.
the next time i went over released from restall's limitations, and stayed to a jolly family supper. i found remarkably few obstacles in my way to a better acquaintance with rachel. you see i was an entirely eligible and desirable young man in mrs. more's eyes....
