A mile off, beyond the fields, lay a road which stretched in the
contrary direction to Millcote; a road I had never travelled, but
often noticed, and wondered where it led: thither I bent my steps.
No reflection was to be allowed now: not one glance was to be cast
back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either
to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet--
so deadly sad--that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage
and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank: something
like the world when the deluge was gone by.
I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise. I
believe it was a lovely summer morning: I know my shoes, which I
had put on when I left the house, were soon wet with dew. But I
looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature.
He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold,
thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block
and axe-edge; of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave
gaping at the end: and I thought of drear flight and homeless
wandering--and oh! with agony I thought of what I left. I could not
help it. I thought of him now--in his room--watching the sunrise;
hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him and be his.
I longed to be his; I panted to return: it was not too late; I
could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement. As yet my
flight, I was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and be his
comforter--his pride; his redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin.
Oh, that fear of his self-abandonment--far worse than my
abandonment--how it goaded me! It was a barbed arrow-head in my
breast; it tore me when I tried to extract it; it sickened me when
remembrance thrust it farther in. Birds began singing in brake and
copse: birds were faithful to their mates; birds were emblems of
love. What was I? In the midst of my pain of heart and frantic
effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I had no solace from self-
approbation: none even from self-respect. I had injured--wounded--
left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes. Still I could not
turn, nor retrace one step. God must have led me on. As to my own
will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled
the other. I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way:
fast, fast I went like one delirious. A weakness, beginning
inwardly, extending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell: I lay on
the ground some minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf. I had
some fear--or hope--that here I should die: but I was soon up;
crawling forwards on my hands and knees, and then again raised to my
feet--as eager and as determined as ever to reach the road.