Then I returned to my seat on the window-sill, curled myself up tighter
than ever, flattened my nose again against the pane, and began to think
out my dismal thoughts.
Yes, my thoughts were undoubtedly dismal, and very melancholy must my
eyes have looked, and absurdly long and drawn down the corners of my
mouth. Had anybody been there to see, they must have pronounced me
sentimental in the extreme; but no one was by, and--there was the rub--
that was the reason I looked so melancholy. Even Gwen, rocking baby to
sleep, could be disturbed at least by my long drawn sighs, but Gwen had
retired into the night nursery, out of reach of my despondency, and
though I could hear her cheerful voice in the distance, she certainly
could no longer hear me. I was utterly alone.
I pressed my face against the window pane, and gazed at the scene before
me. It was a fair scene enough. A broad sweep of sea, the waves
sparkling in the sunshine--some rugged rocks--a little patch of white
sand; all this lay close. In the distance were some hills,
magnificently clothed. To the right, I saw oak, ash, beech, in their
autumn dress; to the left, yellow fields of corn, an orchard or two;
some mowers were cutting down the corn, and laughing merrily; some
children were eating apples in the orchards--over all a gentle breeze
stirred, and the sun shone out of an almost cloudless sky.
Yes, the scene was very fair, but I did not appreciate it. My eyes had
rested on those trees, and those hills, and that sea all my life--I was
tired of the unvarying monotony. Nothing wearied me so much as when
visitors came to stay with mother, visitors who did not know our
country, and who consequently went into raptures over our Welsh scenery.
I am quite sure now that the raptures were genuine, but at the time
they seemed to me very like duty talk. I always listened
contemptuously; I always answered carelessly, "Oh, yes, the place is
well enough;" and I always thought bitterly in my heart of hearts.
It is easy for you, fine sir or madam, to speak and to admire, who need
only stay in this place for a week or fortnight, but what if you had to
live here _always_, from year's end to year's end. If you had to see
the meadows, and orchards, and sea, and the old grey house, and the
trees and sky--in short, all the fair landscape, not only in its summer
glory, but in its winter desolation, would not the country then appear a
little tiresome to you? Might you not then find an occasional visit to
Cardiff, and an occasional ride across the fields, and a far from
occasional stay at home, slightly wearying, and might it not possibly
occur to you that yours was a dull life? For this was my fate. I had
always lived at Tynycymmer. I had always seen the hills clothed with
trees in the distance; I had always watched the ripening fruit in the
orchards, and the ripening corn in the fields. In short, I was a Welsh
girl who had never gone out of Wales in her life. Never had I even seen
Gloucester, never had I set foot on English soil.
Circumstances too many to mention had conspired to thus isolate me. I
had once paid a visit, when a little child, to North Wales, but all the
rest of my sixteen years had been spent with mother, at Tynycymmer, in
the county of Glamorganshire. A rich country, a rambling, romantic old
home, a fair scene, where gentle care had tended me, this I
acknowledged, but I also knew that I was tired, weary, sick of it all.
With my absurdly dismal face gazing outward, I repeated the question to
myself, which nurse Gwen had refused to answer; "What is it to be buried
alive?"
The question had arisen in my mind from a paragraph in a local paper,
which I had seen to-day.