KENELM might have reached Oxford that night, for he was a rapid and untirable pedestrian; but he halted a little after the moon rose, and laid himself down to rest beneath a new-mown haystack, not very far from the high road.
He did not sleep. Meditatingly propped on his elbow, he said to himself,—
“It is long since I have wondered at nothing. I wonder now: can this be love,—really love,—unmistakably love? Pooh! it is impossible; the very last person in the world to be in love with. Let us reason upon it,—you, myself, and I. To begin with,—face! What is face? In a few years the most beautiful face may be very plain. Take the Venus at Florence. Animate her; see her ten years after; a chignon, front teeth (blue or artificially white), mottled complexion, double chin,—all that sort of plump prettiness goes into double chin. Face, bah! What man of sense—what pupil of Welby, the realist—can fall in love with a face? and even if I were simpleton enough to do so, pretty faces are as common as daisies. Cecilia Travers has more regular features; Jessie Wiles a richer colouring. I was not in love with them,—not a bit of it. Myself, you have nothing to say there. Well, then, mind? Talk of mind, indeed! a creature whose favourite companionship is that of butterflies, and who tells me that butterflies are the souls of infants unbaptized. What an article for ‘The Londoner,’ on the culture of young women! What a girl for Miss Garrett and Miss Emily Faithfull! Put aside Mind as we have done Face. What rests?—the Frenchman’s ideal of happy marriage? congenial circumstance of birth, fortune, tastes, habits. Worse still. Myself, answer honestly, are you not floored?”
Whereon “Myself” took up the parable and answered, “O thou fool! why wert thou so ineffably blessed in one presence? Why, in quitting that presence, did Duty become so grim? Why dost thou address to me those inept pedantic questionings, under the light of yon moon, which has suddenly ceased to be to thy thoughts an astronomical body and has become, forever and forever, identified in thy heart’s dreams with romance and poesy and first love? Why, instead of gazing on that uncomfortable orb, art thou not quickening thy steps towards a cozy inn and a good supper at Oxford? Kenelm, my friend, thou art in for it. No disguising the fact: thou art in love!”
“I’ll be hanged if I am,” said the Second in the Dualism of Kenelm’s mind; and therewith he shifted his knapsack into a pillow, turned his eyes from the moon, and still could not sleep. The face of Lily still haunted his eyes; the voice of Lily still rang in his ears.
Oh, my reader! dost thou here ask me to tell thee what Lily was like?—was she dark? was she fair? was she tall? was she short? Never shalt thou learn these secrets from me. Imagine to thyself the being to which thine whole of life, body and mind and soul, moved irresistibly as the needle to the pole. Let her be tall or short, dark or fair, she is that which out of all womankind has suddenly become the one woman for thee. Fortunate art thou, my reader, if thou chance to have heard the popular song of “My Queen” sung by the one lady who alone can sing it with expression worthy the verse of the poetess and the music of the composition, by the sister of the exquisite songstress. But if thou hast not heard the verse thus sung, to an accompaniment thus composed, still the words themselves are, or ought to be, familiar to thee, if thou art, as I take for granted, a lover of the true lyrical muse. Recall then the words supposed to be uttered by him who knows himself destined to do homage to one he has not yet beheld:—
“She is standing somewhere,—she I shall honour,
She that I wait for, my queen, my queen;
Whether her hair be golden or raven,
Whether her eyes be hazel or blue,
I know not now, it will be engraven
Some day hence as my loveliest hue.
She may be humble or proud, my lady,
Or that sweet calm which is just between;
But whenever she comes, she will find me ready
To do her homage, my queen, my queen.”
Was it possible that the cruel boy-god “who sharpens his arrows on the whetstone of the human heart” had found the moment to avenge himself for the neglect of his altars and the scorn of his power? Must that redoubted knight-errant, the hero of this tale, despite the Three Fishes on his charmed shield, at last veil the crest and bow the knee, and murmur to himself, “She has come, my queen”?
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