[A] Wordsworth

[B] Dante

CHAPTER III

It was on my sixteenth birthday that my aunt received a letter from my father.  I cannot describe the tumult of emotions that arose within me as I read it.  It was dated from London; he had returned![15] I could only relieve my transports by tears, tears of unmingled joy.  He had returned, and he wrote to know whether my aunt would come to London or whether he should visit her in Scotland.  How delicious to me were the words of his letter that concerned me:  “I cannot tell you,” it said, “how ardently I desire to see my Mathilda.  I look on her as the creature who will form the happiness of my future life:  she is all that exists on earth that interests me.  I can hardly prevent myself from hastening immediately to you but I am necessarily detained a week and I write because if you come here I may see you somewhat sooner.”  I read these words with devouring eyes; I kissed them, wept over them and exclaimed, “He will love me!”—­

My aunt would not undertake so long a journey, and in a fortnight we had another letter from my father, it was dated Edinburgh:  he wrote that he should be with us in three days.  “As he approached his desire of seeing me,” he said, “became more and more ardent, and he felt that the moment when he should first clasp me in his arms would be the happiest of his life.”

How irksome were these three days to me!  All sleep and appetite fled from me; I could only read and re-read his letter, and in the solitude of the woods imagine the moment of our meeting.  On the eve of the third day I retired early to my room; I could not sleep but paced all night about my chamber and, as you may in Scotland at midsummer, watched the crimson track of the sun as it almost skirted the northern horizon.  At day break I hastened to the woods; the hours past on while I indulged in wild dreams that gave wings to the slothful steps of time, and beguiled my eager impatience.  My father was expected at noon but when I wished to return to me[e]t him I found that I had lost my way:  it seemed that in every attempt to find it I only became more involved in the intracacies of the woods, and the trees hid all trace by which I might be guided.[16] I grew impatient, I wept; [sic] and wrung my hands but still I could not discover my path.

It was past two o’clock when by a sudden turn I found myself close to the lake near a cove where a little skiff was moored—­It was not far from our house and I saw my father and aunt walking on the lawn.  I jumped into the boat, and well accustomed to such feats, I pushed it from shore, and exerted all my strength to row swiftly across.  As I came, dressed in white, covered only by my tartan rachan, my hair streaming on my shoulders, and shooting across with greater speed that it could be supposed I could give to my boat, my father has often told me that I looked more like a spirit than a human maid.  I approached the shore, my father held the boat, I leapt lightly out, and in a moment was in his arms.