My life--childhood I can scarcely call it--went quietly for several
years. The eastern wing of the house was left unused, and rarely
traversed by any but myself. Foolish tales, of course, were told about
it; but my frequent visits found nothing to confirm them. At night,
whenever I could slip from the care of good but matter-of-fact Ann
Maples, I used to wander down the long corridor, and squeeze through the
iron gate now set there, half in hope and half in fear of meeting my
father's spirit. For such an occasion all my questions were prepared,
and all the answers canvassed. My infant mind was struggling ever to
pierce the mystery which so vaguely led its life. Years only quickened
my resolve to be the due avenger, and hardened the set resolve into a
fatalist's conviction. My mother, always full of religious feeling,
taught me daily in the Scriptures, and tried to make me pray. But I
could not take the mild teachings of the Gospel as a little child. To
me the Psalms of David, and those books of the Old Testament which
recount and seem to applaud revenge, were sweeter than all the balm of
Gilead; they supplied a terse and vigorous form to my perpetual
yearnings. With a child's impiety, I claimed for myself the mission of
the Jews against the enemies of the Lord. The forms of prayer, which my
mother taught me, I mumbled through, while looking in her gentle face,
with anything but a prayerful gaze. For my own bedside I kept a widely
different form, which even now I shudder to repeat. And yet I loved
dear mother truly, and pitied her sometimes with tears; but the
shadow-love was far the deeper.
My father's grave was in the churchyard of the little village which
clustered and nestled beyond our lodge. It was a real grave. The
thought of lying in a vault had always been loathsome to him, and he
said that it struck him cold. So fond was he of air and light and
freedom, the change of seasons and weather, and the shifting of the sun
and stars, that he used to pray that they still might pass over his
buried head; that he might lie, not in the dark lockers of death, but in
the open hand of time. His friends used to think it strange that a man
of so light and festive nature should ever talk of death; yet so he
often did, not morbidly, but with good cheer. In pursuance, therefore,
of his well-known wish, the vaults wherein there lay five centuries of
Vaughan dust were not opened for him; neither was his grave built over
with a hideous ash-bin; but lay narrow, fair, and humble, with a plain,
low headstone of the whitest marble, bearing his initials deeply carved
in grey. Through our warm love and pity, and that of all the village,
and not in mere compliance with an old usage of the western counties,
his simple bed was ever green and white with the fairest of low flowers.
Though otherwise too moody and reckless to be a gardener, I loved to
rear from seed his favourite plants, and keep them in my room until they
blossomed; then I would set them carefully along his grave, and lie down
beside it, and wonder whether his spirit took pleasure in them.
But more often, it must be owned, I laid a darker tribute there. The
gloomy channel into which my young mind had been forced was overhung, as
might be expected, by a sombre growth. The legends of midnight spirits,
and the tales of blackest crime, shed their poison on me. From the dust
of the library I exhumed all records of the most famous atrocities, and
devoured them at my father's grave. As yet I was too young to know what
grief it would cause to him who slept there, could he but learn what his
only child was doing. That knowledge would at once have checked me, for
his presence was ever with me, and his memory cast my thoughts, as
moonlight shapes the shadows.
The view from the churchyard was a lovely English scene. What higher
praise can I give than this? Long time a wanderer in foreign parts,
nothing have I seen that comes from nature to the heart like a true
English landscape.
The little church stood back on a quiet hill, which bent its wings in a
gentle curve to shelter it from the north and east. These bending wings
were feathered, soft as down, with, larches, hawthorn, and the
lightly-pencilled birch, between which, here and there, the bluff rocks
stood their ground. Southward, and beyond the glen, how fair a spread
of waving country we could see! To the left, our pretty lake, all clear
and calm, gave back the survey of the trees, until a bold gnoll, fringed
with alders, led it out of sight. Far away upon the right, the Severn
stole along its silver road, leaving many a reach and bend, which caught
towards eventide the notice of the travelled sun. Upon the horizon
might be seen at times, the blue distance of the Brecon hills.
Often when I sat here all alone, and the evening dusk came on, although
I held those volumes on my lap, I could not but forget the murders and
the revenge of men, the motives, form, and evidence of crime, and nurse
a vague desire to dream my life away.
Sometimes also my mother would come here, to read her favourite Gospel
of St. John. Then I would lay the dark records on the turf, and sit
with my injury hot upon me, wondering at her peaceful face. While, for
her sake, I rejoiced to see the tears of comfort and contentment dawning
in her eyes, I never grieved that the soft chastenment was not shed on
me. For her I loved and admired it; for myself I scorned it utterly.
The same clear sunshine was upon us both: we both were looking on the
same fair scene--the gold of ripening corn, the emerald of woods and
pastures, the crystal of the lake and stream; above us both the peaceful
heaven was shed, and the late distress was but a night gone
by--wherefore had it left to one the dew of life, to the other a
thunderbolt? I knew not the reason then, but now I know it well.
Although my favourite style of literature was not likely to improve the
mind, or yield that honeyed melancholy which some young ladies woo, to
me it did but little harm. My will was so bent upon one object, and the
whole substance and shape of my thoughts so stanch in their sole
ductility thereto, that other things went idly by me, if they showed no
power to promote my end. But upon palpable life, and the doings of
nature I became observant beyond my age. Things in growth or motion
round me impressed themselves on my senses, as if a nerve were touched.
The uncoiling of a fern-frond, the shrinking of a bind-weed blossom, the
escape of a cap-pinched bud, the projection of a seed, or the sparks
from a fading tuberose, in short, the lighter prints of Nature's
sandalled foot, were traced and counted by me. Not that I derived a
maiden pleasure from them, as happy persons do, but that it seemed my
business narrowly to heed them.
As for the proud phenomena of imperial man, so far as they yet survive
the crucible of convention--the lines where cunning crouches, the smile
that is but a brain-flash, the veil let down across the wide mouth of
greed, the guilt they try to make volatile in charity,--all these I was
not old and poor enough to learn. Yet I marked unconsciously the traits
of individuals, the mannerism, the gesture, and the mode of speech, the
complex motive, and the underflow of thought. So all I did, and all I
dreamed, had one colour and one aim.
My education, it is just to say, was neglected by no one but myself. My
father's love of air and heaven had descended to me, and nothing but my
mother's prayers or my own dark quest could keep me in the house.
Abstract principles and skeleton dogmas I could never grasp; but
whatever was vivid and shrewd and native, whatever had point and
purpose, was seized by me and made my own. My faculties were not large,
but steadfast now, and concentrated.
Though several masters tried their best, and my governess did all she
could, I chose to learn but little. Drawing and music (to soothe my
mother) were my principal studies. Of poetry I took no heed, except in
the fierce old drama.
Enough of this. I have said so much, not for my sake, but for my story.