Bangladeshi-Bengali.Com: Online Story. Who Was She?

The writing was a woman's, but it had surely taken its character from

certain features of her own: it was clear, firm, individual. It had

nothing of that air of general debility which usually marks the

manuscript of young ladies, yet its firmness was far removed from the

stiff, conventional slope which all Englishwomen seem to acquire in

youth and retain through life. I don't see how any man in my situation

could have helped reading a few lines--if only for the sake of

restoring lost property. But I was drawn on, and on, and finished by

reading all: thence, since no further harm could be done, I reread,

pondering over certain passages until they stayed with me. Here they

are, as I set them down, that evening, on the back of a legal blank:

"It makes a great deal of difference whether we wear social forms as

bracelets or handcuffs."

"Can we not still be wholly our independent selves, even while doing,

in the main, as others do? I know two who are so; but they are

married."

"The men who admire these bold, dashing young girls treat them like

weaker copies of themselves. And yet they boast of what they call

'experience'!"

"I wonder if any one felt the exquisite beauty of the noon as I did

to-day? A faint appreciation of sunsets and storms is taught us in

youth, and kept alive by novels and flirtations; but the broad,

imperial splendor of this summer noon!--and myself standing alone in

it---yes, utterly alone!"

"The men I seek must exist: where are they? How make an acquaintance,

when one obsequiously bows himself away, as I advance? The fault is

surely not all on my side."

There was much more, intimate enough to inspire me with a keen interest

in the writer, yet not sufficiently so to make my perusal a painful

indiscretion. I yielded to the impulse of the moment, took out my

pencil, and wrote a dozen lines on one of the blank pages. They ran

something in this wise:

"IGNOTUS IGNOTAE!--You have bestowed without intending it, and I have

taken without your knowledge. Do not regret the accident which has

enriched another. This concealed idyl of the hills was mine, as I

supposed, but I acknowledge your equal right to it. Shall we share the

possession, or will you banish me?"

There was a frank advance, tempered by a proper caution, I fancied, in

the words I wrote. It was evident that she was unmarried, but outside

of that certainty there lay a vast range of possibilities, some of them

alarming enough. However, if any nearer acquaintance should arise out

of the incident, the next step must be taken by her. Was I one of the

men she sought? I almost imagined so--certainly hoped so.

I laid the book on the rock, as I had found it, bestowed another keen

scrutiny on the lonely landscape, and then descended the ravine. That

evening, I went early to the ladies' parlor, chatted more than usual

with the various damsels whom I knew, and watched with a new interest

those whom I knew not. My mind, involuntarily, had already created a

picture of the unknown. She might be twenty-five, I thought; a

reflective habit of mind would hardly be developed before that age.

Tall and stately, of course; distinctly proud in her bearing, and

somewhat reserved in her manners. Why she should have large dark eyes,

with long dark lashes, I could not tell; but so I seemed to see her.

Quite forgetting that I was (or had meant to be) _Ignotus_, I found

myself staring rather significantly at one or the other of the young

ladies, in whom I discovered some slight general resemblance to the

imaginary character. My fancies, I must confess, played strange pranks

with me. They had been kept in a coop so many years that now, when I

suddenly turned them loose, their rickety attempts at flight quite

bewildered me.

No! there was no use in expecting a sudden discovery. I went to the

glen betimes, next morning: the book was gone and so were the faded

flowers, but some of the latter were scattered over the top of another

rock, a few yards from mine. Ha! this means that I am not to withdraw,

I said to myself: she makes room for me! But how to surprise her?--for

by this time I was fully resolved to make her acquaintance, even though

she might turn out to be forty, scraggy, and sandy-haired.

I knew no other way so likely as that of visiting the glen at all times

of the day. I even went so far as to write a line of greeting, with a

regret that our visits had not yet coincided, and laid it under a stone

on the top of _her_ rock. The note disappeared, but there was no answer

in its place. Then I suddenly remembered her fondness for the noon

hours, at which time she was "utterly alone." The hotel _table d'hote_

Avas at one o'clock: her family, doubtless, dined later, in their own

rooms. Why, this gave me, at least, her place in society! The question

of age, to be sure, remained unsettled; but all else was safe.

The next day I took a late and large breakfast, and sacrificed my

dinner. Before noon the guests had all straggled back to the hotel from

glen and grove and lane, so bright and hot was the sunshine. Indeed, I

could hardly have supported the reverberation of heat from the sides of

the ravine, but for a fixed belief that I should be successful. While

crossing the narrow meadow upon which it opened, I caught a glimpse of

something white among the thickets higher up. A moment later it had

vanished, and I quickened my pace, feeling the beginning of an absurd

nervous excitement in my limbs. At the next turn, there it was again!

but only for another moment. I paused, exulting, and wiped my drenched

forehead. "She can not escape me!" I murmured between the deep draughts

of cooler air I inhaled in the shadow of a rock.

A few hundred steps more brought me to the foot of the steep ascent,

where I had counted on overtaking her. I was too late for that, but the

dry, baked soil had surely been crumbled and dislodged, here and there,

by a rapid foot. I followed, in reckless haste, snatching at the laurel

branches right and left, and paying little heed to my footing. About

one-third of the way up I slipped, fell, caught a bush which snapped at

the root, slid, whirled over, and before I fairly knew what had

happened, I was lying doubled up at the bottom of the slope.