Seeing Ahead

“your house catches afire, and there ain’t no water round” LEADBELLY

My friend’s face was so animated as he recounted this tale to me that I have set it down as he spoke it, absent my own ejaculations. JAMES FOWLER, March XX, 1869

Oxford is a fist. Too many days’ ride away for me now, I go there sleeping, I bend to cut a stone from my shoe between the draymen on the High, and cold of all the clay out east hits stark between my eyes. Or on the Corn the smell of the river crosses a hundred yards of roofs and clamps my face, bargemen, horses, smouldering. But even then the drapery of saints surrounds me, the phallus of a church, and always the colleges in their panelling, I’m lost, and I’ll never escape west or through the hovels of the unfortunates around the edge of the place, never get out of this endless, perfect masonry.
Oh my dear young man, indulge an old one. I drift when I can speak. Never mind my reading, nor the mirage of my degree. I was there four years, two before and two after that night. No, no grey hairs came of it - though if you mean your words about your how much you will study you’ll know how the dons become such druids. You laugh, yet I was neither lord nor churl when it came to my books - learning was no more nor less to me than to any squire’s son. Still, even now my library stands without a fire in the hearth. But let me tell you more.
There’s an alehouse in the knot of streets behind some noble buildings - a college, a room where rich men enjoy music. I was a friend of it, though such places were forbidden us. I do not shock you. You know my character - or do you know your own? Say nothing. You are not to study Divinity, at least.
To that inn I went - in the library that afternoon, distracted, I met the looks of my confreres and knew to the instant what time our nibs would blot the margins of our pages. I, in firmness has resisted long above the rest - the greater my thirst therefore!
The way to the place led down some noisome streets, off the main route between the colleges, and the alley was lit only by the colour of the fires the mean families who dwelt there had lit. My feet encountered mere filth, my ear the assaults of coarse voices and the mewling of sickly mothers. Shapes of men and women of low virtue leaned against the poor brick, which ran with the icy water soaking from the eaves invisible in the fug of smoke above me. The proctors on occasion had loafers cleared from such spots so to improve the character of the town, but they soon returned, and I was careful to keep my eyes down to where I barely discerned my feet in the soft ground.
Yet I failed, as it seemed, I failed to look like a townsman merely slipping his way to some ale, for what light I obtained round the collar of my coat was extinguished, and the laughter from the inn ahead deadened on a sudden. As I feared, there was a figure before me. I was not a youth much given to thought of what lay ahead, yet when I attempted and failed to make out features, I remembered my books and thought of them lying on the polished wood in the library undisturbed until some sad-faced friend came to restore them to their shelves. I saw myself blanked out, and did not see heaven, but an emptiness ever forward. I need not add that I felt cold fear.
But the figure made no move toward me. I glanced behind, to see if his fellow were creeping up to throw a cord round my throat, but the passage there was fogged and bare as when I had entered. Faintly, the sound of the inn reached me, and I had a moment in which I knew that it was warmth, and safety and comfort - and forever beyond me.
But still the figure did not move, and I began to think myself mistaken in his intent, and thought to step around him. He moved with me, and I fell back a little, and then I saw his visage. I did not know it then, but I am familiar with it now. It is before me every day, and it is before you now. I confronted myself as an old man, as you see me here in this chair, though in that alley I did not hold this fine cut glass.
How did I come to encounter myself in that alley? You may well ask. I know of no reason for it, and I know no reason for what followed. Meeting myself was no wonder because I did not know that it was myself. All I encountered next was full of astonishment, however.
That older man raised up his hands, veined and yellowing as you see them, jutting out from great sleeves, and between those long fingers I perceived a child. Her head was turned from me, unbonnetted so that I saw with great clarity her fair tousle of hair, and her arms were spread, her palms upward. She was presented to me, so, and I put my own young hands out to take her.
Her weight shocked me, how suddenly she pulled my shoulders down, yet even at that moment I felt the intricate work of her ribs, breathing, warm. Beneath my thumbs her shoulder blades worked as she lifted her arms. Her legs kicked against me. I heard the flowing brook of her babble, all the words on the brink of toppling whole into the world. I leaned forward to glimpse her face, she rested against me and I saw the round of an ear, the half-globe of her cheek…
I knew her to be my first child, my future child. In those bare instants I knew her name, she was whole and living as you are yourself, my young friend. I knew how she would play, how she took things with great care in her tiny fingers, and how she would grow before my eyes, wilful but beautiful, and be a good daughter to me in my age. She was the ghost of the child I would have. I did not see her face, but all this I knew from the weight of her in my trembling hands.
Then the older man reached out and took her from me, tenderly. He brought her close to him again, and it seemed his long coat fell about them both, for I could no longer make anything out, and the child’s murmurings ceased. I raised my head to speak, to ask how this could be, but there ahead lay the pathway to the inn, unencumbered, and I heard a fiddle playing loud and fast. My way was clear, but I did not take it. Full of zeal for the pleasures I had been pledged, I reeled from the spot and made my way to my chambers. I spent the night sleepless.
I had seen a spirit, not some horror from the past, but a blessing from the future. Or for a time so I believed. Yet you see me here an old man, a likeness of that man in that alley in a long-past Oxford, and you know I have no child, nor have ever had, I have not even married.
When I am without company, I sit and dream that child again and again. She was certain, she came from a place as real as this room, and yet she never came to be. For what purpose was I vouchsafed this vision?
Ah, but it is late, and I have tried your patience. You must not think of me, but of your own concerns. Go now to bed, and rise fresh. The gardener tells me we are sure to have a fine day tomorrow, and you will want to see my plans for the park.