Meanwhile one or two of the boys had made their appearance, and I therefore had my dinner with them. After dinner, as there was nothing particular to do, I was again dismissed with them for a walk just as the light of the winter afternoon was fading. My companions were dejected, and so was I! The wind was southeasterly, cold, and raw, and the smoke came up from the region about the river and shrouded all the building plots in fog. I was now something more than depressed. It was absolutely impossible to endure such a state of things any longer, and I determined that, come what might, I would not stop. I considered whether I should leave without saying a word—that is to say, whether I should escape, but I feared pursuit and some unknown legal proceedings.
When I got home, therefore, I sought the principal, and informed him that I felt so unwell that I was afraid I must throw up my engagement at once. He naturally observed that this was a serious business for him; that my decision was very hasty—what was the matter with me? I might get better; but he concluded, after my reiterated asseverations that I must go, with a permission to resign, only on one condition, that I should obtain an equally efficient substitute at the same salary. I was more agitated than ever. With my natural tendency to believe the worst, I had not the least expectation of finding anybody who would release me.
The next morning I departed on my errand. I knew a poor student who had been at college with me, and who had nothing to do, and to him I betook myself. I strove—as even now I firmly believe—not to make the situation seem any better than it was, and he consented to take it. I have no clear recollection of anything that happened till the following day, excepting that I remember with all the vividness of actual and present sensuous perception lugging my box down the ladder and sending for a cab. I was in a fever lest anything should arrest me, but the cab came, and I departed. When I had got fairly clear of the gates, I literally cried tears of joy—the first and the last of my life. I am constrained now, however, to admit that my trouble was but a bubble blown of air, and I doubt whether I have done any good by dwelling upon it.
IX
Oxford Street
Until I had actually left, I hardly knew where I was going, but at last I made up my mind I would go to Reuben Shapcott, another fellow-student, whom I knew to be living in lodgings in one of the streets just then beginning to creep over the unoccupied ground between Camden Town and Haverstock Hill, near the Chalk Farm turnpike gate. To his address I betook myself, and found him not at home. He, like me, had been unsuccessful as a minister, and wrote a London letter for two country papers, making up about £100 or £120 a year by preaching occasionally in small Unitarian chapels in the country. I waited till his return, and told him my story. He advised me to take a bed in the house where he was staying, and to consider what could be done.
At first I thought I would consult Mardon, but I could not bring myself to go near him. How was I to behave in Mary’s presence? During the last few months she had been so continually before me, that it would have been absolutely impossible for me to treat her with assumed indifference. I could not have trusted myself to attempt it. When I had been lying alone and awake at night, I had thought of all the endless miles of hill and valley that lay outside my window, separating me from the one house in which I could be at peace; and at times I scarcely prevented myself from getting up and taking the mail train and presenting myself at Mardon’s door, braving all consequences. With the morning light, however, would come cooler thoughts and a dull sense of impossibility.
This, I know, was not pure love for her; it was a selfish passion for relief. But then I have never known what is meant by a perfectly pure love. When Christian was in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and, being brought to the mouth of hell, was forced to put up his sword, and could do no other than cry, O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul
, he heard a voice going before him and saying, Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear none ill, for Thou art with me
. And by and by the day broke. “Then,” said Christian, “He hath turned the Shadow of Death into morning. Whereupon Christian sang—
“Oh, world of wonders! (I can say no less)
That I should be preserved in that distress
That I have met with here! Oh, blessed be
That hand that from it hath delivered me!”
This was Christian’s love for God, and for God as his helper. Was that perfectly pure? However, this is a digression. I determined to help myself in my own way, and thought I would try the publishers. One morning I walked from Camden Town to Paternoster Row. I went straightway into two or three shops and asked whether they wanted anybody. I was ready to do the ordinary work it of a publisher’s assistant, and aspired no higher. I met with several refusals, some of them not over-polite, and the degradation—for so I felt it—of
