I applied the circumstances in which I then found myself to my theory, and met no difficulty in the adaptation. Blondel was to perform a great part in my future. Blondel was a symbol selected by fate to indicate a certain direction. Blondel was a lamp by which I could find my way in the dark paths of the world. With Blondel, my Good Genius would walk beside me, or occasionally get up on the crupper, but never leave me or desert me. In the high excitement of my mind, I felt no sense of bodily fatigue, but walked on, drenched to the skin, alternately shivering with cold or burning with all the intensity of fever. In this state was it that I entered the little inn of Ovoco soon after daybreak, and stood dripping in the bar, a sad spectacle of exhaustion and excitement My first question was, “Has Blondel been here?” and before they could reply, I went on with all the rapidity of delirium to assure them that deception of me would be fruitless; that Fate and I understood each other thoroughly, travelled together on the best of terms, never disagreed about anything, but, by a mutual system of give and take, hit it off like brothers. I talked for an hour in this strain; and then my poor faculties, long struggling and sore pushed, gave way completely, and I fell into brain fever.
I chanced upon kind and good-hearted folk, who nursed me with care and watched me with interest; but my illness was a severe one, and it was only in the sixth week that I could be about again, a poor, weak, emaciated creature, with failing limbs and shattered nerves. There is an indescribable sense of weariness in the mind after fever, just as if the brain had been enormously over-taxed and exerted, and that in the pursuit of all the wild and fleeting fancies of delirium it had travelled over miles and miles of space. To the depressing influence of this sensation is added the difficulty of disentangling the capricious illusions of the sick-bed from the actual facts of life; and in this maze of confusion my first days of convalescence were passed. Blondel was my great puzzle. Was he a reality, or a mere creature of imagination? Had I really ridden him as a horse, or only as an idea? Was he a quadruped with mane and tail, or an allegory invented to typify destiny? I cannot say what hours of painful brain labor this inquiry cost me, and what intense research into myself. Strange enough, too, though I came out of the investigation convinced of his existence, I arrived at the conclusion that he was a “horse and something more.” Not that I am able to explain myself more fully on that head, though, if I were writing this portion of my memoirs in German, I suspect I could convey enough of my meaning to give a bad headache to any one indulgent enough to follow me.
I set out once more upon my pilgrimage on a fine day of June, my steps directed to the village of Inistioge, where Father Dyke resided. I was too weak for much exertion, and it was only after five days of the road I reached at nightfall the little glen in which the village stood. The moon was up, streaking the wide market-places with long lines of yellow light between the rows of tall elm-trees, and tipping with silvery sheen the bright eddies of the beautiful river that rolled beside it. Over the granite cliffs that margined the stream, laurel, and arbutus, and wild holly clustered in wild luxuriance, backed higher up again, by tall pine-trees, whose leafy summits stood out against the sky; and lastly, deep within a waving meadow, stood an old ruined abbey, whose traceried window was now softly touched by the moonlight All was still and silent, except the rush of the rapid river, as I sat down upon a stone bench to enjoy the scene and luxuriate in its tranquil serenity. I had not believed Ireland contained such a spot, for there was all the trim neatness and careful propriety of an English village, with that luxuriance of verdure and wild beauty so eminently Irish. How was it that I had never heard of it before? Were others aware of it, or was the discovery strictly my own? Or can it possibly be that all this picturesque loveliness is but the effect of a mellow moon? While I thus questioned myself, I heard the sound of a quick footstep rapidly approaching, and soon afterwards the pleasant tone of a rich voice humming an opera air. I arose, and saw a tall, athletic-looking figure, with rod and fishing-basket, approaching me.
“May I ask you, sir,” said I, addressing him, “if this village contains an inn?”
“There is, or rather there was, a sort of inn here,” said he, removing his cigar as he spoke; “but the place is so little visited that I fancy the landlord found it would not answer, and so it is closed at this moment.”
“But do visitors—tourists—never pass this way?”
“Yes, and a few salmon-fishers, like myself, come occasionally in the season; but then we dispose ourselves in little lodgings, here and there, some of us with the farmers, one or two of us with the priest.”
“Father Dyke?” broke I in.
“Yes; you know him, perhaps?”
“I have heard of him, and met him, indeed,” added I, after a pause. “Where may his house be?”
“The prettiest spot in the whole glen. If you 'd like to see it in this picturesque moonlight, come along with me.”
I accepted the invitation at once, and we walked on together. The easy, half-careless tone of the stranger, the loose, lounging stride of his walk, and a certain something in his mellow voice, seemed to indicate one of those natures which, so to say, take the world well—temperaments that reveal themselves almost immediately. He talked away about fishing as he went, and appeared to take a deep interest in the sport, not heeding much the ignorance I betrayed on the subject, nor my ignoble confession that I had never adventured upon anything higher than a worm and a quill.
“I'm sure,” said he, laughingly, “Tom Dyke never encouraged you in such sporting-tackle, glorious fly-fisher as he is.”
“You forget, perhaps,” replied I, “that I scarcely have any acquaintance with him. We met once only at a dinnerparty.”
“He's a pleasant fellow,” resumed he; “devilish wideawake, one must say; up to most things in this same world of ours.”
“That much my own brief experience of him can confirm,” said I, dryly, for the remark rather jarred upon my feelings.
“Yes,” said he, as though following out his own train of thought “Old Tom is not a bird to be snared with coarse lines. The man must be an early riser that catches him napping.”
I cannot describe how this irritated me. It sounded like so much direct sarcasm upon my weakness and want of acuteness.
“There's the 'Rosary;' that's his cottage,” said he, taking my arm, while he pointed upward to a little jutting promontory of rock over the river, surmounted by a little thatched cottage almost embowered in roses and honeysuckles. So completely did it occupy the narrow limits of ground, that the windows projected actually over the stream, and the creeping plants that twined through the little balconies hung in tangled masses over the water. “Search where you will through the Scottish and Cumberland scenery, I defy you to match that,” said my companion; “not to say that you can hook a four-pound fish from that little balcony on any summer evening while you smoke your cigar.”
“It is a lovely spot, indeed,” said I, inhaling with ecstasy the delicious perfume which in the calm night air seemed to linger in the atmosphere.
“He tells me,” continued my companion—“and I take his word for it, for I am no florist—that there are seventy varieties of the rose on and around that cottage. I can answer for it that you can't open a window without a great mass of flowers coming in showers over you. I told him, frankly, that if I were his tenant for longer than the fishing-season, I 'd clear half of them away.”
“You live there, then?” asked I, timidly.
“Yes, I rent the cottage, all but two rooms, which he wished to keep for himself, but which he now writes me word may be let, for this month and the next, if a tenant offer. Would you like them?” asked he, abruptly.
“Of all things—that is—I think so—I should like to see them first!” muttered I, half startled by the suddenness of the question.
“Nothing