Mark Rutherford’s Deliverance

we professed to understand. To say nothing of the Jews, whose meagre system would certainly not have been thought either satisfying or orthodox by modern Christians, the Greeks and Romans lived in no clearer light than that which shines on me. The critics, too, will condemn because of our weakness; but this defect I at once concede. The severest critic could not possibly be so severe as I am upon myself. I know my failings. He, probably, would miss many of them. But, again I urge that men are not to be debarred by reason of weakness from doing what little good may lie within reach of their hands. Had we attempted to save scholars and thinkers we should have deserved the ridicule with which no doubt we shall be visited. We aspired to save nobody. We knew no salvation ourselves. We ventured humbly to bring a feeble ray of light into the dwellings of two or three poor men and women; and if Prometheus, fettered to his rock, dwelt with pride on the blind hopes which he had caused to visit mortals, the hopes which “stopped the continued anticipation of their destiny,” we perhaps may be pardoned if at times we thought that what we were doing was not altogether vanity.

VII

Qui Dedit in Mari Viam

From time to time I received a newspaper from my native town, and one morning, looking over the advertisements, I caught sight of one which arrested me. It was as follows:⁠—

A Widow Lady desires a situation as Daily Governess to little children. Address E. B., care of Mrs. George Andrews, Fancy Bazaar, High Street.

Mrs. George Andrews was a cousin of Ellen Butts, and that this was her advertisement I had not the slightest doubt. Suddenly, without being able to give the least reason for it, an unconquerable desire to see her arose within me. I could not understand it. I recollected that memorable resolution after Miss Arbour’s story years ago. How true that counsel of Miss Arbour’s was! and yet it had the defect of most counsel. It was but a principle; whether it suited this particular case was the one important point on which Miss Arbour was no authority. What was it which prompted this inexplicable emotion? A thousand things rushed through my head without reason or order. I begin to believe that a first love never dies. A boy falls in love at eighteen or nineteen. The attachment comes to nothing. It is broken off for a multitude of reasons, and he sees its absurdity. He marries afterwards some other woman whom he even adores, and he has children for whom he spends his life; yet in an obscure corner of his soul he preserves everlastingly the cherished picture of the girl who first was dear to him. She, too, marries. In process of time she is fifty years old, and he is fifty-two. He has not seen her for thirty years or more, but he continually turns aside into the little oratory, to gaze upon the face as it last appeared to him when he left her at her gate and saw her no more. He inquires now and then timidly about her whenever he gets the chance. And once in his life he goes down to the town where she lives, solely in order to get a sight of her without her knowing anything about it. He does not succeed, and he comes back and tells his wife, from whom he never conceals any secrets, that he has been away on business. I did not for a moment confess that my love for Ellen had returned. I knew who she was and what she was, and what had led to our separation; but nevertheless, all this obstinately remained in the background, and all the passages of love between us, all our kisses, and above everything, her tears at that parting in her father’s house, thrust themselves upon me. It was a mystery to me. What should have induced that utterly unexpected resurrection of what I believed to be dead and buried, is beyond my comprehension. However, the fact remains. I did not to myself admit that this was love, but it was love, and that it should have shot up with such swift vitality merely because I had happened to see those initials was miraculous. I pretended to myself that I should like once more to see Mrs. Butts⁠—perhaps she might be in want and I could help her. I shrank from writing to her or from making myself known to her, and at last I hit upon the expedient of answering her advertisement in a feigned name, and requesting her to call at the King’s Arms hotel upon a gentleman who wished to engage a widow lady to teach his children. To prevent any previous inquiries on her part, I said that my name was Williams, that I lived in the country at some little distance from the town, but that I should be there on business on the day named. I took up my quarters at the King’s Arms the night before. It seemed very strange to be in an inn in the place in which I was born. I retired early to my bedroom, and looked out in the clear moonlight over the river. The landscape seemed haunted by ghosts of my former self. At one particular point, so well known, I stood fishing. At another, equally well known, where the water was dangerously deep, I was examining the ice; and round the corner was the boathouse where we kept the little craft in which I had voyaged so many hundreds of miles on excursions upwards beyond where the navigation ends, or, still more fascinating, down to where the water widens and sails are to be seen, and there is a foretaste of the distant sea. It is no pleasure to me to revisit scenes in which earlier