Her companion was wanted to play from the book, and play
worthily, the works of the great masters (whom this young creature
adored)--and she, listening, would take her place next at the piano, and
reproduce the music morsel by morsel, by ear. A professor was appointed
to pronounce sentence on me, and declare if I could be trusted not to
misinterpret Mozart, Beethoven, and the other masters who have written
for the piano. Through this ordeal I passed with success. As for my
references, they spoke for themselves. Not even the lawyer (though he
tried hard) could pick holes in them. It was arranged on both sides that
I should, in the first instance, go on a month's visit to the young lady.
If we both wished it at the end of the time, I was to stay, on terms
arranged to my perfect satisfaction. There was our treaty!
The next day I started for my visit by the railway.
My instructions directed me to travel to the town of Lewes in Sussex.
Arrived there, I was to ask for the pony-chaise of my young lady's
father--described on his card as Reverend Tertius Finch. The chaise was
to take me to the rectory-house in the village of Dimchurch. And the
village of Dimchurch was situated among the South Down Hills, three or
four miles from the coast.
When I stepped into the railway carriage, this was all I knew. After my
adventurous life--after the volcanic agitations of my republican career
in the Doctor's time--was I about to bury myself in a remote English
village, and live a life as monotonous as the life of a sheep on a hill?
Ah, with all my experience, I had yet to learn that the narrowest human
limits are wide enough to contain the grandest human emotions.
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