My mother lived in a little cottage at a place called the Green Lanes,
about three miles from Dublin. The name was happily given, for on every
side there were narrow roads overshadowed by leafy trees, which met
above and gave only glimpses of sky and cloud through their feathery
foliage. The close hedgerows of white or pink thorn limited the view on
either side, and imparted a something of gloom to a spot whose silence
was rarely broken, for it was not a rich man's neighborhood. They who
frequented it were persons of small fortune, retired subalterns in the
army, or clerks in public offices, and such like petty respectabilities
who preferred to herd together, and make no contrasts of their humble
means with larger, greater incomes.
Amongst the sensations I shall never forget--and which, while I write,
are as fresh as the moment I first felt them--were my feelings when the
car stopped opposite a low wicket, and Mr. McBride, the attorney, helped
me down and said, “This is your home, Digby; your mother lives here.”
The next moment a pale but very handsome young woman came rushing down
the little path and clasped me in her arms. She had dropped on her knees
to bring her face to mine, and she kissed me madly and wildly, so that
my cap fell off. “See how my frill is all rumpled,” said I, unused as
I was to such disconcerting warmth, and caring far more for my smart
appearance than for demonstrations of affection. “Oh, darling, never
mind it,” sobbed she. “You shall have another and a nicer. I will make
it myself, for my own boy,--for you are mine, Digby. You are mine,
dearest, ain't you?”
“I am papa's boy,” said I, doggedly.
“But you will love mamma too, Digby, won't you?--poor mamma, that has no
one to love her, or care for her if you do not; and who will so love
you in return, and do everything for you,--everything to make you
happy,--happy and good, Digby.”
“Then let us go back to Earls Court. It's far prettier than this, and
there are great lions over the gateway, and wide steps up to the door. I
don't like this. It looks so dark and dreary,--it makes me cry.” And to
prove it, I burst out into a full torrent of weeping, and my mother hung
over me and sobbed too; and long after the car had driven away, we
sat there on the grass weeping bitterly together, though there was no
concert in our sorrow, nor any soul to our grief.
That whole afternoon was passed in attempts to comfort and caress me by
my mother, and in petulant demands on my part for this or that luxury I
had left behind me. I wanted my nice bed with the pink curtains, and my
little tool-case. I wanted my little punt, my pony, my fishing-rod.
I wanted the obsequious servants, who ran at my bidding, and whose
respectful manner was a homage I loved to exact. Not one of these was
forthcoming, and how could I believe her who soothingly told me that her
love would replace them, and that her heart's affection would soon be
dearer to roe than all my toys and all the glittering presents that
littered my room? “But I want my pony,” I cried; “I want my little dog
Fan, and I want to sit beside papa, and see him drive four horses, and
he lets me whip them too, and _you_ won't.” And so I cried hysterically
again, and in these fretful paroxysms I passed my evening.
The first week of my life there was to me--it still is to me--like a
dream,--a sad, monotonous dream. Repulsed in every form, my mother still
persisted in trying to amuse or interest me, and I either sat in moody
silence, refusing all attention, or went off into passionate grief,
sobbing as if my heart would break. “Let him cry his fill,” said old
Biddy the maid,--“let him cry his fill, and it will do him good.” And I
could have killed her on the spot as she said it.
If Biddy Cassidy really opined that a hearty fit of crying would have
been a good alterative for me, she ought not to have expressed the
opinion in my presence, for there was that much of my father in me that
quickly suggested resistance, and I at once resolved that, no matter
what it might cost me, or by what other means I might find a vent for
my grief, I 'd cry no more. All my poor mother's caresses, all her
tenderness, and all her watchful care never acted on my character with
half the force or one-tenth of the rapidity that did this old hag's
attempt to thwart and oppose me. Her system was, by a continual
comparison between my present life and my past, to show how much better
off I was now than in my former high estate, and by a travesty of all I
had been used to, to pretend that anything like complaint from me would
be sheer ingratitude. “Here's the pony, darlin', waitin' for you to ride
him,” she would say, as she would lay an old walking-stick beside my
door; and though the blood would rush to my head at the insult, and
something very nigh choking rise to my throat, I would master my passion
and make no reply. This demeanor was set down to sulkiness, and Biddy
warmly entreated my mother to suppress the temper it indicated, and, as
she mildly suggested, “cut it out of me when I was young”--a counsel, I
must own, she did not follow.
Too straitened in her means to keep a governess for me, and unwilling
to send me to a school, my mother became my teacher herself; and, not
having had any but the very commonest education, she was obliged to
acquire in advance what she desired to impart. Many a night would she
pore over the Latin Grammar, that she might be even one stage before me
in the morning. Over and over did she get up the bit of geography that
was to test my knowledge the next day; and in this way, while leading
_me_ on, she acquired, almost without being aware of it, a considerable
amount of information. Her faculties were above the common, and her zeal
could not be surpassed; so that, while I was stumbling and blundering
over “Swaine's Sentences,” she had read all Sallust's “Catiline,” and
most of the “Odes” of Horace; and long before I had mastered my German
declensions, she was reading “Grimm's Stories” and Auerbach's “Village
Sketches.” Year after year went over quietly, uneventfully. I had long
ceased to remember my former life of splendor, or, if it recurred to
me, it came with no more of reality than the events of a dream. One day,
indeed,--I shall never forget it,--the past revealed itself before me
with the vivid distinctness of a picture, and, I shame to say, rendered
me unhappy and discontented for several days after. I was returning one
afternoon from a favorite haunt, where I used to spend hours,--the old
churchyard of Killester, a long-unused cemetery, with a ruined church
beside it,--when four spanking chestnuts came to the foot of the little
rise on which the ruin stood, and the servants, jumping down, undid the
bearing-reins, to breathe the cattle up the ascent. It was my father was
on the box; and as he skilfully brushed the flies from his horses with
his whip, gently soothing the hot-mettled creatures with his voice, I
bethought me of the proud time when I sat beside him, and when he talked
to me of the different tempers of each horse in the team, instilling
into me that interest and that love for them, as thinking sentient
creatures, which gives the horse a distinct character to all who have
learned thus to think of him from childhood. He never looked at me as he
passed. How should he recognize the little boy in the gray linen blouse
he was wont to see in black velvet with silver buttons? Perhaps I was
not sorry he did not know me. Perhaps I felt it easier to fight my own
shame alone than if it had been confessed and witnessed. At all events,
the sight sent me home sad and depressed, no longer able to take
pleasure in my usual pursuits, and turning from my toys and books with
actual aversion.
Remembering how all mention of my father used to affect my mother long
ago, seeing how painfully his mere name acted upon her, I forbore to
speak of this incident, and buried it in my heart, to think and ruminate
over when alone.
Time went on and on till I wanted but a few months of twelve, and my
lessons were all but dropped, as my mother's mornings were passed
either in letter-writing or in interviews with her lawyer. It was on
the conclusion of one of these councils that Mr. McBride led me into the
garden, and, seating me beside him on a bench, said, “I have something
to say to you, Digby; and I don't know that I 'd venture to say it, if
I had not seen that you are a thoughtful boy, and an affectionate son of
the best mother that ever lived. You are old enough, besides, to have a
right to know something about yourself and your future prospects, and it
is for that I have come out to-day.” And with this brief preface he told
me the whole story of my father's and mother's marriage and separation;
and how it came to pass that I had been taken from one to live with the
other; and how the time was now drawing nigh--it wanted but two months
and ten days--when I should be once more under my father's guidance,
and totally removed from the influence of that mother who loved me so
dearly.
“We might fight the matter in the courts, it is true,” said he. “There
are circumstances which might weigh with a judge whether he 'd remove
you from a position of safety and advantage to one of danger and
difficulty; but it would be the fight of a weak purse against a strong
one, not to say that it would also be the struggle of a poor mother's
heart against the law of the land; and I have at last persuaded her
it would be wiser and safer not to embitter the relations with your
father,--to submit to the inevitable; and not improbably you may be
permitted to see her from time to time, and, at all events, to write to
her.” It took a long time for him to go through what I have so briefly
set down here; for there were many pros and cons, and he omitted none of
them; and while he studiously abstained from applying to my father any
expression of censure or reprobation, he could not conceal from me that
he regarded him as a very cold-hearted, unfeeling man, from whom little
kindness could be expected, and to whom entreaty or petition would be
lost time. I will not dwell on the impression this revelation produced
on me, nor will I linger on the time that followed on it,--the very
saddest of my life. Our lessons were stopped,--all the occupations that
once filled the day ceased,--a mournful silence fell upon us, as though
there was a death in the house; and there was, indeed, the death of that
peaceful existence in which we had glided along for years, and we sat
grieving over a time that was to return no more. My mother tried to
employ herself in setting my clothes in order, getting my books decently
bound, and enabling me in every way to make a respectable appearance in
that new life I was about to enter on; but her grief usually overcame
her in these attempts, and she would hang in tears over the little trunk
that recalled every memory she was so soon to regard as the last traces
of her child. Biddy, who had long, for years back, ceased to torment or
annoy me, came back with an arrear of bitterness to her mockeries and
sneers. “I was going to be a lord, and I'd not know the mother that
nursed me if I saw her in the street! Fine clothes and fine treatment
was more to me than love and affection; signs on it, I was turning my
back on my own mother, and going to live with the blackguard”--she
did n't mince the word--“that left her to starve.” These neatly turned
compliments met me at every moment, and by good fortune served to arm
me with a sort of indignant courage that carried me well through all my
perils.
To spare my poor mother the pain of parting, Mr. McBride--I cannot say
how judiciously--contrived that I should be taken out for a drive
and put on board the packet bound for Holyhead, under the charge of a
courier, whom my father had sent to fetch me, to Brussels, where he was
then living. Of how I left Ireland, and journeyed on afterwards, I know
nothing; it was all confusion and turmoil. The frequent changes from
place to place, the noise, the new people, the intense haste that seemed
to pervade all that went on, addled me to that degree that I had few
collected thoughts at the time, and no memory of them afterwards.
From certain droppings of the courier, however, and his heartily
expressed joy as Brussels came in sight, I gathered that I had been
a very troublesome charge, and refractory to the very limit of actual
rebellion.