The Quest of the Golden Girl: A Romance

by Richard Le Gallienne

  BOOK II

  CHAPTER I

  IN WHICH I DECIDE TO BE YOUNG AGAIN

  Yes, I said to myself, the lad is quite right; I will follow hisadvice. I'm afraid I was in danger of developing into a sad cynic,with a taste for the humour of this world. What should have been alofty high-souled pilgrimage, only less transcendental than that of theHoly Grail itself, has so far failed, no doubt, because I haveundertaken it too much in the wanton spirit of a troubadour.

  I will grow young and serious again. Yes, why not? I will take a vowof Youth. One's age is entirely a matter of the imagination. From thismoment I am no longer thirty. Thirty falls from me like a hideousdream. My back straightens again at the thought; my silvering hairblackens once more; my eyes, a few moments ago lacklustre and sunken,grow bright and full again, and the whites are clear as the finestporcelain. Veni, veni, Mephistophile! your Faust is youngagain,--young, young, and, with a boy's heart, open once more to allthe influences of the mighty world.

  I bring down my stick upon the ground with a mighty ring of resolution,and the miracle is done. Who would take me for thirty now? From thismoment I abjure pessimism and cynicism in all their forms, put from mymind all considerations of the complexities of human life, unravel allby a triumphant optimism which no statistics can abash or criticismdishearten. I likewise undertake to divest myself entirely of anysense of humour that may have developed within me during the banefulexperiences of the last ten years, and, in short, will consent for thefuture to be nothing that is not perfectly perfect and pure. These, Itake it, are the fundamental conditions of being young again.

  And as for the Quest, it shall forthwith be undertaken in an entirelyserious and high-minded spirit. From this moment I am on the look-outfor a really transcendental attachment. No "bright-eyed bar-maids,"however "refined," need apply. Ladies who are prodigal of their whitepetticoats are no longer fit company for me. Indeed I shall no longerlook upon a petticoat, unless I am able first entirely to spiritualiseit. It must first be disinfected of every earthly thought.

  Yes, I am once more a young man, sound in wind and limb, with not atooth or an illusion lost, my mind tabula rasa, my heart to be had forthe asking. Oh, come, ye merry, merry maidens! The fairy prince is onthe fairy road.

  Incipit vita nuova!

  So in the lovely rapture of a new-born resolution--and is there anyrapture like it?--nature has no more intoxicating illusion than that ofturning over a new leaf, or beginning a new life from to-day--I sprangalong the road with a carolling heart; quite forgetting that Apuleiusand Fielding and Boccaccio were still in my knapsack--not to speak ofthe petticoat.

  CHAPTER II

  AT THE SIGN OF THE SINGING STREAM

  Apuleius and Fielding and Boccaccio, bad companions for a petticoat,I'm afraid, bad companions too for so young a man as I had now become.However, as I say, I had for the time forgotten that pagan company, or,in my puritanic zeal, I might have thrown them all to be washed cleanin the upland stream, whose pure waters one might fancy were fragrantfrom their sunny day among the ferns and the heather, fragrant to theeye, indeed, if one may so speak, with the shaken meal of themeadowsweet. This stream had been the good angel of my thoughts all theday, keeping them ever moving and ever fresh, cleansing and burnishingthem, quite an open-air laundry of the mind.

  We were both making for the same little town, it appeared, and as thesun was setting we reached it together. I entered the town over thebridge, and the stream under it, washing the walls of the high-piled,many-gabled old inn where I proposed to pass the night. I should hearit still rippling on with its gentle harpsichord tinkle, as I stretchedmyself down among the cool lavendered sheets, and little by little letslip the multifarious world.

  The inn windows beamed cheerily, a home of ruddy rest. Having orderedmy dinner and found my room, I threw down my knapsack and then came outagain to smoke an ante-prandial pipe, listen to the evensong of thestream, and think great thoughts. The stream was still there, andsinging the same sweet old song. You could hear it long after it wasout of sight, in the gathering darkness, like an old nurse humminglullabies in the twilight.

  The dinner was good, the wine was old, and oh! the rest was sweet!Nothing fills one with so exquisite a weariness as a day spent in goodresolutions and great thoughts. There is something perilously sensuousin the relaxation of one's muscles, both of mind and body, after a daythus well spent.

  Lighting up my pipe once more, and drawing to the fire, I suddenlyrealised a sense of loneliness. Of course, I was lonely for abook,--Apuleius or Fielding or Boccaccio!

  An hour ago they had seemed dangerous companions for so lofty a mood;but now, under the gentle influences of dinner, the mood had not indeedchanged--but mellowed. So to say, we would split the difference betweenthe ideal and the human, and be, say, twenty-five.

  It was in this genial attitude of mind that I strode up the quaintcircular staircase to fetch Fielding from my room, and, shade of TomJones! what should be leaving my room, as I advanced to enter it,but--well, it's no use, resolutions are all very well, but facts arefacts, especially when they're natural, and here was I face to facewith the most natural little natural fact, and withal the most charmingand merry-eyed, that--well, in short, as I came to enter my room I wasconfronted by the roundest, ruddiest little chambermaid ever createdfor the trial of mortal frailty.

  And the worst of it was that her merry eye was in partnership with amerry tongue. Indeed, for some unexplained reason, she was bubblingover with congested laughter, the reason for which mere embarrassmentset one inquiring. At last, between little gushes of laughter whichshook her plump shoulders in a way that aroused wistful memories ofHebe, she archly asked me, with mock solemnity, if I should need alady's maid.

  "Certainly," I replied with inane promptitude, for I had no notion ofher drift; but then she ran off in a scurry of laughter, and stillpuzzled I turned into my room, TO FIND, neatly hung over the end of thebed, nothing less than the dainty petticoat and silk stockings ofSylvia Joy.

  You can imagine the colour of my cheeks at the discovery. No doubt Iwas already the laughing-stock of the whole inn. What folly! What ayoung vixen! Oh, what's to be done? Pay my bill and sneak off at onceto the next town; but how pass through the grinning line of boots, andwaiter, and chambermaid, and ironically respectful landlord andlandlady, in the hall...

  But while I thus deliberated, something soft pressed in at the door;and, making a sudden dart, I had the little baggage who had broughtabout my dilemma a prisoner in my arms.

  I stayed some days at this charming old inn, for Amaryllis--oh, yes,you may be sure her name was Amaryllis--had not betrayed me; and indeedshe may have some share in my retrospect of the inn as one of the mostdelightful which I encountered anywhere in my journeying. Would youlike to know its name? Well, I know it as The Singing Stream. If youcan find it under that name, you are welcome. And should you chance tobe put into bedroom No. 26, you can think of me, and how I used to lieawake, listening to the stream rippling beneath the window, with itsgentle harpsichord tinkle, and little by little letting slip themultifarious world.

  And if anything about this chapter should seem to contradict the highideals of the chapter preceding it, I can only say that, though theepisode should not rigidly fulfil the conditions of the transcendental,nothing could have been more characteristic of that early youth towhich I had vowed myself. Indeed, I congratulated myself, as I lookedmy last at the sign of The Singing Stream, that this had been quite inmy early manner.

  CHAPTER III

  IN WHICH I SAVE A USEFUL LIFE

  Though I had said good-bye to the inn, the stream and I did not partcompany at the inn-door, but continued for the best part of a morningto be fellow-travellers. Indeed, having led me to one pleasantadventure, its purpose, I afterwards realised, was to lead me toanother, and then to go about its own bright business.

  I don't think either of us had much idea where we were or whither wewere bound. Our guiding principle se
emed to be to get as much sunshineas possible, and to find the easiest road. We avoided dull sandylevels and hard rocky places, with the same instinctive dexterity. Wegloomed together through dark dingles, and came out on sunny reacheswith the same gilded magnificence. There are days when every stream isPactolus and every man is Croesus, and thanks to that first andgreatest of all alchemists, the sun, the morning I write of was amorning when to breathe was gold and to see was silver. And to breatheand see was all one asked. It was the first of May, and the worldshone like a great illuminated letter with which that father ofartists, the sun, was making splendid his missal of the seasons.

  The month of May was ever his tour de force. Each year he has strainedand stimulated his art to surpass himself, seeking ever a finer and abrighter gold, a more celestial azure. Never had his gold been sogolden, his azure so dazzlingly clear and deep as on this particularMay morning; while his fancy simply ran riot in the marginaldecorations of woodland and spinney, quaint embroidered flowers andcopses full of exquisitely painted and wonderfully trained birds ofsong. It was indeed a day for nature to be proud of. So seductive wasthe sunshine that even the shy trout leapt at noonday, eager apparentlyto change his silver for gold.

  O silver fish in the silver stream, O golden fish in the golden gleam, Tell me, tell me, tell me true, Shall I find my girl if I follow you?

  I suppose the reader never makes nonsense rhymes from sheer gladness ofheart,--nursery doggerel to keep time with the rippling of the stream,or the dancing of the sun, or the beating of his heart; the gibberishof delight. As I hummed this nonsense, a trout at least three poundsin weight, whom you would know again anywhere, leapt a yard out of thewater, and I took it, in my absurd, sun-soaked heart, as a good omen,as though he had said, "Follow and see."

  I had no will but to follow, no desire but to see. All the same,though I affected to take him seriously, I had little suspicion howmuch that trout was to mean to me,--yes, within the course of a veryfew moments. Indeed, I had hardly strolled on for another quarter of amile, when I was suddenly aroused from wool-gathering by his loud criesfor help. Looking up, I saw him flashing desperately in mid-air, alovely foot of writhing silver. In another second he was swung throughthe sunlight, and laid out breathing hard in a death-bed of buttercupsand daisies.

  There was not a moment to be lost, if I were to repay the debt ofgratitude which in a flash I had seen that I owed him.

  "Madam," I said, breathlessly springing forward, as a heavenly beingwas coldly tearing the hook from the gills of the unlucky trout,"though I am a stranger, will you do me a great favour? It is a matterof life or death..."

  She looked up at me with some surprise, but with a fine fearlessglance, and almost immediately said, "Certainly, what can I do?"

  "Spare the life of that trout--"

  "It is a singular request," she replied, "and one," she smiled,"self-sacrificing indeed for an angler to grant, for he weighs at leastthree pounds. However, since he seems a friend of yours, here goes--"And with the gladdest, most grateful sound in the world, the happysmack of a fish back home again in the water, after an appalling threeminutes spent on land, that prophetic trout was once more an activeunit in God's populous universe.

  "Now that's good of you," I said, with thankful eyes, "and shows a kindheart."

  "And kind hearts, they say, are more than coronets," she repliedmerrily, indulging in that derisive quotation which seems to be thefinal reward of the greatest poets.

  For a moment there was a silence, during which I confess to wonderingwhat I should say next. However, she supplied my place.

  "But of course," she said, "you owe it to me, after this touchingdisplay of humanitarianism, to entertain me with your reason forinterposing between me and my just trout. Was it one of thosewonderful talking fishes out of the Arabian Nights, or are you merelyan angler yourself, and did you begrudge such a record catch to a girl?"

  "I see," I replied, "that you will understand me. That trout was, soto speak, out of the Arabian Nights. Only five minutes ago it was aMay-day madness of mine to think that he leaped out of the water andgave me a highly important message. So I begged his life from a merefancy. It was just a whim, which I trust you will excuse."

  "A whim! So you are a follower of the great god Whim," she replied,with somewhat of an eager interest in her voice. "How nice it is tomeet a fellow-worshipper!"

  "Do women ever have whims?" I respectfully asked.

  "I don't know about other women," she replied. "Indeed, I'm afraid I'munnatural enough to take no interest in them at all. But, as forme,--well, what nonsense! Tell me some more about the trout. What wasthe wonderful message he seemed to give you? Or perhaps I oughtn't toask?"

  "I'm afraid," I said, "it would hardly translate into anythingapproaching common-sense."

  "Did I ask for common-sense?" she retorted. It was true, she hadn't.But then I couldn't, with any respect for her, tell her the trout'smessage, or, with any respect for myself, recall those atrociousdoggerel lines. In my dilemma, I caught sight of a pretty book lyingnear her fishing-basket, and diverted the talk by venturing to ask itsname.

  "'T is of Aucassin and Nicolete," she replied, with something in hervoice which seemed to imply that the tender old story would be familiarto me. My memory served me for once gallantly.

  I answered by humming half to myself the lines from the prologue,--

  "Sweet the song, the story sweet, There is no man hearkens it, No man living 'neath the sun, So outwearied, so foredone, Sick and woful, worn and sad, But is healed, but is glad 'T is so sweet."

  "How charming of you to know it!" she laughed. "You are the only manin this county, or the next, or the next, who knows it, I'm sure."

  "Are the women of the county more familiar with it?" I replied.

  "But tell me about the trout," she once more persisted.

  At the same moment, however, there came from a little distance themusical tinkle of a bell that sounded like silver, a fairy-like andalmost startling sound.

  "It is my lunch," she explained. "I'm a worshipper of the great godWhim too, and close by here I have a little summer-house, full of booksand fishing-lines and other childishness, where, when my whim is to belonely, I come and play at solitude. If you'll be content with rusticfare, and promise to be amusing, it would be very pleasant if you'djoin me."

  O! most prophetic and agreeable trout! Was it not like the old fairytales, the you-help-us and we'll-help-you of Psyche and the ants?

  It had been the idlest whim for me to save the life of that poor trout.There was no real pity in it. For two pins, I had been just as readyto cut it open, to see if by chance it carried in its belly the goldenring wherewith I was to wed the Golden--

  However, such is the gratitude of nature to man, that this littlethoughtless act of kindness had brought me face to face with--was itthe Golden Girl?

  CHAPTER IV

  'T IS OF NICOLETE AND HER BOWER IN THE WILDWOOD

  But I have all this time left the reader without any formal descriptiveintroduction to this whimsical young lady angler. Not without reason,for, like any really charming personality, she was very difficult topicture. Paint a woman! as our young friend Alastor said.

  Faces that fall into types you can describe, or at all events label insuch a way that the reader can identify them; but those faces thatconsist mainly of spiritual effect and physical bloom, that change witheverything they look upon, the light in which ebbs and flows with everychanging tide of the soul,--these you have to love to know, and toworship to portray.

  Now the face of Nicolete, as I learnt in time to call her, was justsoul and bloom, perhaps mainly bloom. I never noticed whether she hadany other features except her eyes. I suppose she had a nose; a littlelace pocket-handkerchief I have by me at the moment is almost too smallto be evidence on that important point.

  As I walked by her side that May morning, I was only conscious of hervoice and her exquisite girlhood; for though she ta
lked with the APLOMBof a woman of the world, a passionate candour and simple ardour in hermanner would have betrayed her, had her face not plainly declared herthe incarnation of twenty. But if she were twenty years young, she wasequally twenty years OLD; and twenty years old, in some respects, isthe greatest age attained to by man or woman. In this she ratherdiffered from Alastor, of whom otherwise she was the femalecounterpart. Her talk, and something rather in her voice than hertalk, soon revealed her as a curious mixture of youth and age, ofdreamer and desillusionee.

  One soon realised that she was too young, was hoping too much fromlife, to spend one's days with. Yet she had just sufficiently thattouch of languor which puts one at one's ease, though indeed it wasrather the languor of waiting for what was going to happen than theweariness of experience gone by. She was weary, not because of thepast, but because the fairy theatre of life still kept its curtaindown, and forced her to play over and over again the impatient overtureof her dreams.

  I have no doubt that it was largely nervousness that kept themysterious playwright so long fumbling behind the scenes, for it wasobvious that it would be no ordinary sort of play, no every-daydomestic drama, that would satisfy this young lady, to whom life hadgiven, by way of prologue, the inestimable blessing of wealth, and theprivilege, as a matter of course, of choosing as she would among thegrooms (that is, the bride-grooms) of the romantic British aristocracy.

  She had made youth's common mistake of beginning life with books, whichcan only be used without danger by those who are in a position to testtheir statements. Youth naturally believes everything that is told it,especially in books.