Following darkness

What is there in this house, in these surroundings, so utterly different from those I was born amongst, that revives a swarm of memories of my childhood and youth? My notes are...

Of my earliest childhood I can form no consecutive picture; I shall therefore pass over it quickly. Certain incidents stand out with extraordinary vividness, but the chain uniti...

It is difficult, as I have said, in looking back over those days, to see things in any fixed order. It is as if one’s memories floated in a kind of haze, appearing and disappear...

Scarlatina broke out in the village in the spring of that year, a week or two before my sixteenth birthday. There were not many cases, and all were mild, but there was much talk...

I awoke in broad sunlight. The room was full of it, and the scent of flowers floated in through the open windows and mingled with the faint smell of drugs. For some time I lay t...

When, some time in July, Mrs. Carroll told me that she had invited her nephew and niece, Gerald and Katherine Dale, to come on a visit to Derryaghy, I became at once very curiou...

I went home in a state of profound depression. I had made a hopeless fool of myself; probably they were talking about it now. These thoughts were rendered no brighter by being m...

I was wakened in the morning by Tony scratching at my door. Still half-asleep, I got up to let him in, and then returned to bed, where he had already taken the most comfortable...

A quarter of an hour later, as I walked up to Derryaghy, Willie Breen, the grocer’s son, a little boy of ten or eleven, ran out from the shop, and, after gazing carefully up and...

I stayed in the house all the evening, but I could not read, and so I sat down to write to Katherine. I wrote for more than an hour, though I was very doubtful whether, in the e...

During the morning my father kept me working in the garden where he was erecting a kind of arch of trellis-work above the gate, but after our early dinner I went up to Derryaghy...

It was half-past eight when I left home to go to Derryaghy, but at the corner of the Bryansford Road I met Willie Breen and stopped to get particulars about our meeting to-morro...

It was late, and the house was quiet. When I leaned out of my window I could hear the sound of the waves, but no other sound; then I opened my bedroom door softly, and crept out...

Next morning I got a rowing up from my father. Indeed, as soon as I saw my face in the glass, I knew it would be quite useless to try to hide what had happened, and I told him f...

Katherine, who had promised to sit to me for her portrait, kept putting me off from day to day, and it was nearly a week later when I made my first attempt. By some happy chance...

On that Saturday the village was a holiday village. The men and boys perspired freely under heavy, ugly, Sunday clothes, and the women and girls were decked out in all kinds of...

During that last week of August, after the Dales had left, “I wandered lonely as a cloud.” Up to the eve of their departure I had been happier than I had ever been in my life, b...

At the other end I was met by my cousin George, a big, red-haired hobbledehoy of seventeen, with a curiously small face, bright brown eyes with a reddish light in them, and a fr...

Next morning I was awakened by somebody singing, and opening my eyes I saw George, in his shirt and trousers, strutting up and down the middle of the floor, a hair-brush in his...

On Monday morning I went to school. I arrived half an hour before the proper time, and as my classes had already been arranged, I had nothing to do but loiter about and take sto...

I had formed no definite conception of what my new school would be like, but there was a flatness about the reality for which I was unprepared. I seemed to slip into my place at...

Two months went by in this fashion, and I had begun to look forward to Christmas and to count the weeks that separated me from the holidays, when an incident occurred which was...

That night, for the first time, I felt George’s fascination falter, and it is a fact rather melancholy in its significance that this consciousness came to me in the form of a se...

My friendship with Owen was at present the one quite satisfactory thing in my life. Neither at school nor at home was I particularly successful. I worked very little, merely suf...

I went to the opera every night that week, as I had planned to do, but the edge of my appetite was blunted, and, save in the case of “Tannhäuser,” and of “Lohengrin,” I was disa...

I had been asked to the Gills’ for eight o’clock, and at half-past six I began to dress. After posting my acceptance my next care had been in regard to the clothes I should wear...

When I got to my feet to go back to the dancing-room, everything swayed before my eyes, and I held on to the back of my chair till I had steadied myself. I felt now as bold as a...

Owen looked unconvinced, but he decided to change the subject. “Do you know the part of the book that I really like best? It is where Levine mows the meadows with the peasants.”

He smiled. “I’m sure I will. I wish, all the same, you were going to be with me. I thought of it, but then I thought you would rather go home.”

It was a beautiful, clear, winter night when I walked home. Over the low wall I looked out at the dark, smooth sea, stretching away, almost black, save where the moonlight touch...

After breakfast I screwed up my courage to the point of broaching the subject I had most on my mind. “There is something I want to say to you,” I began, and my father instantly...

Two or three days before, I had sent off a small picture to Katherine as a Christmas-box. It had taken me a long time to choose something I thought she might care for, and which...

About this time, influenced by Amiel, whom I had come across in Mrs. Humphry Ward’s translation, I had begun to keep a diary, or journal, of my “sensations and ideas.” I unearth...

The matter, as I soon perceived, was not at all so simple as in the first flush of discovery it appeared to be. But one excellent effect it had, and that was to make Sunday, whi...

As I walked home with Owen next day after school I wanted to tell him what I had done, but it was somehow difficult to do so quite abruptly. I turned the conversation to Roman C...

Since Christmas I had been working harder than I had ever done in my life. The Intermediate examinations would be coming on in June, but it was not any particular anxiety to shi...

Spring gave place to summer, and still I kept studiously to my books. I saw less of Owen, for in the afternoons I played cricket, and Owen did not. On the thirteenth of June my...

When I opened my eyes I was lying in bed, with a hot jar at my feet, and the pungent irritation of smelling-salts in my nostrils. Uncle George was in the room, and there was a s...

My examination was at three, and at two o’clock I got up. If I hadn’t done so well on the other papers, probably I should have let it go, but it seemed, in the circumstances, a...

In the morning Tony’s familiar scratching at my door reminded me that I was home again, and this time for two long, idle months. I was very sleepy, but I struggled out of bed wi...

so far as I was concerned, having suffered an eclipse. I had read no second work by him, and the questionings stirred up by “Anna Karénine” had sunk quietly to sleep. Owen, a da...

During the next three weeks I led a solitary enough life, in the woods and by the sea. I read a good deal, and dreamed still more. In the mornings, and often in the afternoons a...

I met Owen at the station, and, as he jumped out of the carriage, he cried, “I’ve got the letter. It was waiting for me when I reached home.” He waved it triumphantly in my face...

Owen and I were standing by the low sea-wall, looking out across the wet brown sands, when I saw her. It was a gray, cloudy day, and the air was full of mist and damp, which hun...

I happened on the thing by the merest accident. My father had been going through the papers in his desk the night before, tying up old letters in bundles, and burning many in th...

Owen and I dined at Derryaghy that night, but all through dinner I sat very quiet. No allusion was made by the others to my having left them, which showed, I thought, that they...

No allusion was made to our absence when we returned to the others. Gerald was still playing, but he got up as soon as we entered, and strolled over to the window, where he stoo...

Owen and I left shortly afterwards. He was very quiet as we walked home, but when we were in bed he said to me, “I’ve decided to go back to town to-morrow.”

I do not know whether Katherine attributed Owen’s sudden departure to me or not, but I think it extremely probable that she did, although she never mentioned it. Yet we sometime...

It was a cloudless afternoon when I went back to Derryaghy. Katherine was quite ready and we set out immediately. As I walked beside her, in her simple cotton dress, and with he...

I had told my father I should be dining at Derryaghy, yet he made no remark when, instead, I came in an hour late for tea. Fresh tea simply was prepared for me, and again, while...

“I want to speak to him,” I answered, very low-spiritedly. I knew he was thinking of the railway-fare, and if I had had any money myself I should never have asked him.

Owen had cheered me up a little; I was glad I had come; and during my return journey I pondered the advice he had given me and decided that I must follow it. I waited till nine...

I wrote that night to Katherine, but she did not reply to my letter, and I had no heart to send a second. Two days passed, during which I did not go near Derryaghy, but took to...

Of the days that followed our reconciliation I tried to make the most. Too much time already had been wasted and spoiled by clouds of jealousy and other troubles. I knew the kin...

When I left Mrs. Carroll I did not go out at once, but scribbled first a note to Katherine, telling her I had gone to the summer-house, and should wait for her there all afterno...

I was writing to Owen when my father brought me Katherine’s letter. It was to say good-bye to me, and there was a veiled reproach at my not having come to the station to see the...

And, after all, I failed! I did not die. I got better, though not quite well, for my lungs remained delicate, and in October Mrs. Carroll took me to be examined by a specialist....