The young lady I have brought before the reader sat a little out of the sun-beams, which, pouring in, and painting the floor with moving tracery, fell also over the table before her; but her eyes could reach the blue sky and catch the clouds wafted over it, as with silent speed they hurried along upon the wings of the wind. It was very still and quiet in that wide high room. The birds could be heard singing without; the busy little flies, those most wonderful pieces of mechanism, buzzed about the windows; and a clock at the top of the stairs ticked faintly. But these were all the sounds; and they seemed only to soothe the silence.
The lady stirred not, spoke not, but sat with her elbow leaning on the table, her cheek, warmly tinged with the rose, resting upon her white hand, the "fringed curtains of her eyes" raised up, and the bright, soft, hazel orbs themselves elevated towards the deep sunshiny heavens. A book was on the table; but she read it not. There was a mandolin in the corner; but she touched it not. Her thoughts were very busy; and her heart was with her thoughts. Yet the images, the questions, the answers which were presented to her mind, touched not upon those topics which any one who did not know her would suppose. She was in the bright expanding time of life, the spring of existence, when the opening bosom of the rose courts the bee. But yet she thought not of love. She knew it not; hardly by name, not at all by sensation, although the young heart will yearn for that which was the only want in Eden's garden when Adam was first formed. It was not of the gay ball, the play, the promenade, or any of the fashionable amusements of the day; for of them she was as ignorant as of love; but problems which have puzzled many an aged philosopher were present to her mind, though not stated in the most philosophical manner. Wildly and strangely they rose, like the fantastic forms of clouds; and she chased them eagerly in thought, as a child chases the fleeting shadows that mock his speed.
"What am I?" she asked herself. "Of what strange elements composed? Body and spirit, soul and mind! What are these things? Is the body the spirit's slave, or the spirit's jailor--servant or master? I can perceive nothing but what it will permit me to perceive. Through its means must be all my communications with things animate or inanimate. There it rules and triumphs. There it is the tyrant, the jailor; and yet I can close my eyes, and the spirit, as if free from its hard bondage, can wing its flight afar into that bright blue sky, and question the heavens as to what is between myself and them. Can it be that the human race is the great pausing point of God's creation, and that between us and Him there is one vast void, untenanted, inanimate? Or is yonder wide expanse of air, the stars, the heavens, the universe, peopled with beings that I see not? Are there spirits in those clouds that skim like ivory chariots through the sky? Are there creatures of light and joy, now sporting with the sun-beams, or resting under the green leaves of the wood? If so, is it possible that there is no means of communication between me and them, that this body is a barrier between the spirit that I feel within it, and the host of spirits thronging around me? Strange, strange existence? what art thou, what am I?"
On went the mind in the same course, inquiring, eager, keen, but untutored and unsatisfied. All the great problems of human existence seemed to crowd upon imagination and demand an answer from that which cannot give it.
These were strange thoughts for a girl of eighteen; but yet perhaps not unnatural for a quick and active spirit in the circumstances which surrounded her. The heart had no occupation to give; and it was impossible that imagination could rest idle. They were strange thoughts certainly; but such were the thoughts of Emmeline.
She was without companionship. She had none whom she could call friends around her. The poor fishermen of the village of Ale were her nearest neighbours. There was none in the house with her with whom she could exchange thought. It had been so during many years, and her mind carried her back to little else than the same state. Far, far away, in the distant past, images like phantoms were seen by the eye of memory--sweet and pleasant images, too, but faint and ill-defined; beings that she loved, forms that hung over her with affection, voices that sounded musical even in remembrance; but she saw them as through a glass; she could not approach nearer; she could not trace them more distinctly. It was like the sight of a distant land beheld across the sea, pleasant to view, but not to be reached, with the waves flowing between the beholder and it.
After that, and after a succeeding period of darkness, in which she perceived nothing, the figure of a venerable old man, the poor curate of the parish, came on her memory. She remembered him well. He had taught her much, and had seemed to regard her with peculiar tenderness and affection. He had instructed her to think, and to delight in thought; to read, and to ponder on what she read; for she had never received what may be called the trifling parts of a woman's education. Masters, it is true, had been procured for her from neighbouring towns; but they were dull, heavy, material teachers. The only one who had really instructed her was that old clergyman. But now he was gone, and she was without a guide, for the man who had succeeded was a fat and jovial priest who loved the material much more than the mental, and whose weekly sermon laid a heavier burden on the shoulders of his spirit than it was well able to bear. He sought not to acquire or to communicate knowledge, except as to where good wine was given or good punch brewed, or where, and at what hour, the savoury haunch was roasted.
I have said that the old clergyman had taught her much; but there was one subject on which he had taught her nothing: her own fate and history. He had studiously avoided it, suffering--perhaps unwillingly, but still intentionally--the facts of the past to drop from memory. She had sometimes inquired, it is true, but he had always stopped her gravely, and circumstances had occurred to make her think even at the early age of fourteen, which she had reached when he died, that he had been bound by some promise to forbear all such information. She even sometimes suspected that his silence as to her history was part of a compact--the condition on which he was permitted to visit and instruct her.
But with whom was the compact? Probably with that swarthy man who is now walking on the terrace below, booted and spurred as for a journey, and waiting for his horses to be brought round. There is nothing very remarkable in his appearance. His face is not forbidding, his features not ill-formed, though his eyes are perhaps somewhat too near together, and the pupils too small, as if they were always in excess of light. He is about the middle height, stout, but not corpulent, and perhaps fifty years of age. His air and manner are those of a gentleman, his dress rich and costly. He is altogether a good-looking middle aged man, but with a certain look of over-shrewdness that might perhaps warn men to be careful in their dealings with him. This is Sir John Newark, the possessor of Ale Manor-House and estates.
Emmeline could not remember when she had first seen him. It was too far back for memory; but she knew that she was not his child. She felt it too, and he always called himself her guardian. By that term he did not mean her tyrant, for he was kind to her, as kind as a man of a cold, calculating, selfish nature could be. Nor was he altogether an unpleasant companion; for, though he had not the slightest spark of imagination, and fancy with him was a bird without wings--though he could not even comprehend the existence of imagination in others, and still less any of the generous and thoughtless impulses of the heart--yet he had a good stock of information upon many subjects, conversed well, and had seen a great deal of the world. He did not in the least understand the character of Emmeline; but yet, as I have said, he was kind to her, and even indulgent. She had her horses to ride, her servants to attend upon her. She was allowed to roam about, through the woods, over the hills, down to the fishermen's cottages, and even to the neighbouring towns. All the restraints he placed upon her were such as the customs of society in that day justified, if they did not require. She was not permitted to visit any house, unless accompanied by an elderly woman, whom he had placed about her, and who acted the part of duenna with much skill and discretion. When she went to the small town of Seaford, she was always well accompanied, and was never out of sight of some one, except while in Ale Manor-House or Park. There she was at full liberty; and she enjoyed it.