sep. 18, 1900.
how can i write what has befallen me? the double disaster that has cut like a knife into my life. was one, i asked myself, the result of the other, sent to me to show that i ought to have been content with what i had, that i ought not to have stretched out my hand to the fruit that hung too high above me. i am too feeble in mind and body to do more than briefly record the incidents that have struck me down. i feel like a shipwrecked sailor who, flung on an unhospitable shore, had with infinite labour and desperate toil dragged a few necessaries out of the floating fragments of the wreck, and piled them carefully and patiently on a ledge out of the reach of the tide, only to find after a night of sudden storm the little store scattered and himself swimming faintly in a raging sea—that sea which the evening before had sunk into so sweet, so caressing a repose, and now like a grey monster aroused to sudden fury, howls and beats for[237] leagues against the stony promontories and the barren beaches.
new friends
i had been in very tranquil spirits and strong health all the summer; my maladies had ceased to trouble me, and for weeks they were out of my thoughts. i had found a quiet zest in the little duties that make up my simple life. i had made, too, a new friend. a pleasant cottage about half a mile from golden end had been taken by the widow of a clergyman with small but sufficient means, who settled there with her daughter, the latter being about twenty-four. i went somewhat reluctantly with my mother to call upon them and offer neighbourly assistance. i found myself at once in the presence of two refined, cultivated, congenial people. mrs. waring, i saw, was not only a well-read woman, interested in books and art, but she had seen something of society, and had a shrewd and humorous view of men and things. miss waring was like her mother; but i soon found that to her mother’s kindly and brisk intellect she added a peculiar and noble insight—that critical power, if i may call it so, which sees what is beautiful and true in life, and strips it of adventitious and superficial disguises in the[238] same way that one with a high appreciation of literature moves instinctively to what is gracious and lofty, and is never misled by talent or unobservant of genius. the society of these two became to me in a few weeks a real and precious possession. i began to see how limited and self-centred my life had begun to be. they did not, so to speak, provide me with new sensations and new material so much as put the whole of life in a new light. i found in the mother a wise and practical counsellor, with a singular grasp of detail, with whom i could discuss any new book i had read or any article that had struck me; but with miss waring it was different. i can only say that her wise and simple heart cast a new light upon the most familiar thoughts. i found myself understood, helped, lifted, in a way that both humiliated and inspired me. moreover, i was privileged to be admitted into near relations with one who seemed to show, without the least consciousness of it, the best and highest possibilities that lie in human nature. i cannot guess or define the secret. i only know that it dawned upon me gradually that here was a human spirit fed like a spring from[239] the purest rains that fall on some purple mountain-head.
the moment
by what soft and unsuspected degrees my feeling of congenial friendship grew into a deeper devotion i cannot now trace. it must now in my miserable loneliness be enough to say that so it was. only a few days ago—and yet the day seems already to belong to a remote past, and to be separated from these last dark hours by a great gulf, misty, not to be passed,—i realised that a new power had come into my life—the heavenly power that makes all things new. i had gone down to the cottage in a hot, breathless sunlight afternoon. i had long passed the formality of ringing to announce my entrance. there was no one in the little drawing-room, which was cool and dark, with shuttered windows. i went out upon the lawn. miss waring was sitting in a chair under a beech tree reading, and at the sight of me she rose, laid down her book, and came smiling across the grass. there is a subtle, viewless message of the spirit which flashes between kindred souls, in front of and beyond the power of look or speech, and at the same moment that i understood i felt she understood too. i could[240] not then at once put into words my hopes; but it hardly seemed necessary. we sat together, we spoke a little, but were mostly silent in some secret interchange of spirit. that afternoon my heart climbed, as it were, a great height, and saw from a pisgah top the familiar land at its feet, all lit with a holy radiance, and then turning, saw, in golden gleams and purple haze, the margins of an unknown sea stretching out beyond the sunset to the very limits of the world.
