"Time wore on. My uncle's wife bore him in succession two girls. This was a respite. My father's spirits rose—but, fallen as he was, he could only celebrate his reawakened hopes by deeper potations and coarse jokes. The next offspring was a boy—he cost my father his life. Habits of drink had inflamed his blood—and his violence of temper made him nearly a maniac. On hearing of the birth of the heir, he drank to drown thought; wine was too slow a medicine; he quaffed deeply of brandy, and fell into a sleep, or rather torpor, from which he never after awoke. It was better so—he had spent everything—he was deeply in debt—he had lost all power of raising himself from the state of debasement into which he had fallen—the next day would have seen him in prison.
"I was taken in by my uncle. At first the peace and order of the household seemed to me paradise—the comfort and regularity of the meals was a sort of happy and perpetual miracle. My eye was no longer blasted by the sight of frightful excesses, nor my ear wounded by obstreperous shouts. I was no longer reviled—I no longer feared being felled to the ground—I was not any more obliged to obtain food by stratagem or by expostulations, which always ended by my being the victim of personal violence. The mere calm was balmy, and I fancied myself free, because I was no longer in a state of perpetual terror.
"But soon I felt the cold—and rigid atmosphere that, as far as regarded me, ruled this calm. No eye of love ever turned on me, no voice ever spoke a cheering word. I was there on sufferance, and was quickly deemed a troublesome inmate; while the order and regularity required of me, and the law passed that I was never to quit the house alone, became at last more tormenting than the precarious, but wild and precious liberty of my former life. My habits were bad enough; my father's vices had fostered my evil qualities—I had never learned to lie or cheat, for such was foreign to my nature; but I was rough, self-willed, lazy, and insolent. I have a feeling, such was my sense of bliss on first entering the circle of order and peace, that a very little kindness would have subdued my temper and awakened a desire to please. It was not tried. From the very first I was treated with a coldness to which a child is peculiarly sensitive; the servants, by enforcing the rules of the house, became first my tormentors, and then my enemies. I grew imperious and violent—complaint, reprehension, and punishment despoiled my paradise of its matin glow—and then I returned at once to my own bad self; I was disobedient and reckless; soon it was decreed that I was utterly intolerable, and I was sent to school.
"This, a boy's common fate, I had endured without a murmur, had it not been inflicted as a punishment, and I made over to my new tyrants, even in my own hearing, as a little blackguard, quite irreclaimable, and only to be kept in order by brute force. It is impossible to describe the effect of this declaration of my uncle—followed up by the master's recommendation to the usher to break my spirit if he could not bend it—had on my heart, which was bursting with a sense of injury, panting for freedom, and resolved not to be daunted by the menaces of the tyrants before me. I declared war with my whole soul against the world; I became all I had been painted; I was sullen, vindictive, desperate. I resolved to run away; I cared not what would befall me; I was nearly fourteen—I was strong, and could work—I could join a gang of gipsies, I could act their life singly, and, subsisting by nightly depredation, spend my days in liberty.
"It was at an hour when I was meditating flight that the master sent for me. I believed that some punishment was in preparation. I hesitated whether I should not instantly fly—a moment's thought told me that was impossible, and that I must obey. I went with a dogged air, and a determination to resist. I found my tyrant with a letter in his hand. 'I do not know what to do with you,' he said; 'I have a letter here from a relation, asking you to spend the day. You deserve no indulgence, but for this once you may go. Remember, any future permission depends upon your turning over an entirely new leaf. Go, sir; and be grateful to my lenity, if you can. Remember, you are to be home at nine.' I asked no questions—I did not know where I was to go; yet I left him without a word. I was sauntering back to the prison-yard which they called a playground, when I was told that there was a pony-chaise at the door ready to take me. My heart leaped at the word; I fancied that, by means of this conveyance, I could proceed on the first stage of my flight. The pony-carriage was of the humblest description; an old man drove. I got in, and away we trotted, the little cob that drew it going much faster than his looks gave warrant. The driver was deaf—I was sullen—not a word did we exchange. My plan was, that he should take me to the farthest point he intended, and then that I should leap out and take to my heels. As we proceeded, however, my rebel fit somewhat subsided. We left the town in which the school was situated, and the dreary, dusty roads I was accustomed to perambulate under the superintendence of the ushers. We entered shady lanes and umbrageous groves; we perceived extensive prospects, and saw the winding of romantic streams; a curtain seemed drawn from before the scenes of nature; and my spirits rose as I gazed on new objects, and saw earth spread wide and free around. At first this only animated me to a keener resolve to fly; but, as we went on, a vague sentiment possessed my soul. The skylarks winged up to heaven, and the swallows skimmed the green earth; I felt happy because nature was gay, and all things free and at peace. We turned from a lane redolent with honeysuckle into a little wood, whose short thick turf was interspersed with moss and starred with flowers. Just as we emerged I saw a little railing, a rustic green gate, and a cottage clustered over with woodbine and jessamine, standing secluded among, yet peeping out from the overshadowing trees. A little peasant boy threw open the gate, and we drove up to the cottage door.
"At a low window which opened on the lawn, in a large arm-chair, sat a lady, evidently marked by ill health, yet with something so gentle and unearthly in her appearance as at once to attract and please. Her complexion had faded into whiteness—her hair was nearly silver, yet not a grizzly grayish white, but silken still in its change; her dress was also white—and there was something of a withered look about her—redeemed by a soft, but bright gray eye, and more by the sweetest smile in the world, which she wore, as, rising from her chair, she embraced me, exclaiming, 'I know you from your likeness to your mother—dear, dear Rupert.'
"That name of itself touched a chord which for many years had been mine. My mother had called me by that name; so indeed had my father, when any momentary softness of feeling allowed him to give me any other appellation except 'You sir!' 'You dog, you!' My uncle, after whom I was also called John, chose to drop what he called a silly, romantic name; and in his house, and in his letters, I was always John. Rupert breathed of a dear home and my mother's kiss; and I looked inquiringly on her who gave it me, when my attention was attracted, riveted by the vision of a lovely girl, who had glided in from another room, and stood near us, radiant in youth and beauty. She was, indeed, supremely lovely—exuberant in all the charms of girlhood—and her beauty was enhanced by the very contrast to the pale lady by whom she stood—an houri she seemed, standing by a disimbodied spirit—black, soft, large eyes, overpowering in their lustre, and yet more so from the soul that dwelt within—a cherub look—a fairy form; with a complexion and shape that spoke of health and joy. What could it mean? Who could she be? And who was she who knew my name? It was an enigma, but one full of promise to me, who had so long been exiled from the charities of life; and who, 'as the hart panteth for the water brooks,' panted for love."
[CHAPTER XXVII]
"After a little explanation, I discovered who my new friends were. The lady and my mother were remotely related; but they had been educated together, and separated only when they married. My mother's death had prevented my knowing that such a relation existed; far less that she took the warmest interest in the son of her earliest friend. Mrs. Rivers had been the poorer of the two, and for a long time considered that her childhood's companion was moving in an elevated sphere of life, while she had married a lieutenant in the navy; and while he was away, attending the duties of his profession, she lived in retirement and economy, in the rustic, low-roofed, yet picturesque and secluded cottage, whose leaf-shrouded casements and flowery lawn even now are before me, and speak of peace. I never call to mind that abode of tranquillity without associating it with the poet's wish:—
'Mine be a cot beside the hill—
A beehive's hum shall sooth my ear;
A willowy brook, that turns a mill,
With many a fall shall linger near.'