MY TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY

Books and dreams, like the two rivers cited by my father, flowed side by side in me without mixing; and which the bright Rhone was, which the brown Arve, needs not to be told to those who know anything of youth; they were destined to intermingle soon enough.  I read well, for I felt ground and had mounting views; the real world, and the mind and passions of the world, grew visible to me.  My tutor pleased the squire immensely by calling me matter-of-fact.  In philosophy and history I hated speculation; but nothing was too fantastic for my ideas of possible occurrences.  Once away from books, I carried a head that shot rockets to the farthest hills.

My dear friend Temple was at sea, or I should have had one near me to detect and control the springs of nonsense.  I was deemed a remarkably quiet sober thoughtful young man, acquiescent in all schemes projected for my welfare.  The squire would have liked to see me courting the girl of his heart, as he termed Janet Ilchester, a little more demonstratively.  We had, however, come to the understanding that I was to travel before settling.  Traditional notions of the importance of the Grand Tour in the education of gentlemen led him to consent to my taking a year on the Continent accompanied by my tutor.  He wanted some one, he said, to represent him when I was out over there; which signified that he wanted some one to keep my father in check; but as the Rev. Ambrose Peterborough, successor to the Rev. Simon Hart, was hazy and manageable, I did not object.  Such faith had the quiet thoughtful young man at Riversley in the convulsions of the future, the whirlwinds and whirlpools spinning for him and all connected with him, that he did not object to hear his name and Janet’s coupled, though he had not a spark of love for her.

I tried to realize to myself the general opinion that she was handsome.  Her eyebrows were thick and level and long; her eyes direct in their gaze, of a flinty blue, with dark lashes; her nose firm, her lips fullish, firm when joined; her shape straight, moderately flexible.  But she had no softness; she could admire herself in my presence; she claimed possession of me openly, and at the same time openly provoked a siege from the remainder of my sex:  she was not maidenly.  She caught imagination by the sleeve, and shut it between square whitewashed walls.  Heriot thought her not only handsome, but comparable to Mrs. William Bulsted, our Julia Rippenger of old.  At his meeting with Julia, her delicious loss of colour made her seem to me one of the loveliest women on earth.  Janet never lost colour, rarely blushed; she touched neither nerve nor fancy.

‘You want a rousing coquette,’ said Heriot; ’you won’t be happy till you ’ve been racked by that nice instrument of torture, and the fair Bulsted will do it for you if you like.  You don’t want a snake or a common serpent, you want a Python.’