Falkner: A Novel

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

To any one who fully understands and appreciates the peculiar beauties of England—who knows how much elegance, content, and knowledge can be sheltered under such a roof, these lines must ever, I think, as to me, have a music of their own, and, unpretending as they are, breathe the very soul of happiness. In this imbowered cot, near which a clear stream murmured—which was clustered over by a thousand odoriferous parasites—which stood in the seclusion of a beech wood—there dwelt something more endearing even than all this—and one glance at the only daughter of Mrs. Rivers served to disclose that an angel dwelt in the paradise.

"Alithea Rivers—there is music, and smiles, and tears—a whole life of happiness—and moments of intensest transport in the sound. Her beauty was radiant; her dark eastern eye, shaded by the veined and darkly-fringed lid, beamed with a soft but penetrating fire; her face of a perfect oval, and lips which were wreathed into a thousand smiles, or softly and silently parted, seemed the home of every tender and poetic expression which one longed to hear them breathe forth; her brow clear as day; her swan throat and symmetrical and fairy-like form disclosed a perfection of loveliness, that the youngest and least susceptible must have felt, even if they did not acknowledge.

"She had two qualities which I have never seen equalled separately, but which, united in her, formed a spell no one could resist—the most acute sensitiveness to joy or grief in her own person, and the most lively sympathy with these feelings in others. I have seen her so enter heart and soul into the sentiments of one in whom she was interested, that her whole being took the colour of their mood; and her very features and complexion appeared to alter in unison with theirs. Her temper was never ruffled; she could not be angry; she grieved too deeply for those who did wrong; but she could be glad; and never have I seen joy, the very sunshine of the soul, so cloudlessly expressed as in her countenance. She could subdue the stoutest heart by a look—a word; and were she ever wrong herself, a sincere acknowledgment, an ingenuous shame—grief to have offended, and eagerness to make reparation, turned her very error into a virtue. Her spirits were high, even to wildness; but, at their height, tempered by such thought for others, such inbred feminine softness, that her most exuberant gayety resembled heart-cheering music, and made each bosom respond. All, everything loved her; her mother idolized her; each bird of the grove knew her; and I felt sure that the very flowers she tended were conscious of, and rejoiced in, her presence.

"Since my birth—or at least since I had lost my mother in early infancy, my path had been cast upon thorns and brambles—blows and stripes, cold neglect, reprehension, and debasing slavery; to such was I doomed. I had longed for something to love—and in the desire to possess something whose affections were my own, I had secreted at school a little nest of field mice on which I tended; but human being there was none who marked me, except to revile, and my proud heart rose in indignation against them. Mrs. Rivers had heard a sad story of my obduracy, my indolence, my violence; she had expected to see a savage, but my likeness to my mother won her heart at once, and the affection I met transformed me at once into something worthy of her. I had been told I was a reprobate till I half believed. I felt that there was war between me and my tyrants, and I was desirous to make them suffer even as they made me. I read in books of the charities of life—and the very words seemed only a portion of that vast system of imposture with which the strong oppressed the weak. I did not believe in love or beauty; or if ever my heart opened to it, it was to view it in external nature, and to wonder how all of perceptive and sentient in this wondrous fabric of the universe was instinct with injury and wrong.

"Mrs. Rivers was a woman of feeling and sense. She drew me out—she dived into the secrets of my heart; for my mother's sake she loved me, and she saw that to implant sentiments of affection was to redeem a character not ungenerous, and far, far from cold—whose evil passions had been fostered as in a hotbed, and whose better propensities were nipped in the bud. She strove to awaken my susceptibility to kindness, by lavishing a thousand marks of favour. She called me her son—her friend; she taught me to look upon her regard as a possession of which nothing could deprive me, and to consider herself and her daughter as near and dear ties that could not be rent away. She imparted happiness, she awoke gratitude, and made me in my innermost heart swear to deserve her favour.

"I now entered on a new state of being, and one of which I had formed no previous idea. I believed that the wish to please one who was dear to me would render every task easy; that I did wrong merely from caprice and revenge, and that if I chose, I could with my finger stem and direct the tide of my passions. I was astonished to find that I could not even bend my mind to attention—and I was angry with myself, when I felt my breast boiling with tumultuous rage, when I promised myself to be meek, enduring, and gentle. My endeavours to conquer these evil habits were indeed arduous. I forced myself by fits and starts to study sedulously—I yielded obedience to our school laws; I taxed myself to bear with patience the injustice and impertinence of the ushers, and the undisguised tyranny of the master. But I could not for ever string myself to this pitch. Meanness, and falsehood, and injustice again and again awoke the tiger in me. I am not going to narrate my boyhood's wrongs; I was doomed. Sent to school with a bad character, which at first I had taken pains to deserve, and afterward doing right in my own way, and still holding myself aloof from all, scorning their praise, and untouched by their censure, I gained no approbation, and was deemed a dangerous savage, whose nails must be kept close pared, and whose limbs were still to be fettered, lest he should rend his keepers.

"From such a scene I turned, each Sunday morning, my willing steps to the cottage of Mrs. Rivers. There was something fascinating to me in the very peculiarities of her appearance. Ill health had brought premature age upon her person—but her mind was as active and young—her feelings as warm as ever. She could only stand for a few minutes, and could not unassisted walk across the room—she took hardly any nourishment, and looked, as I have said, more like a spirit than a woman. Thus deprived of every outward resource, her mind acquired, from habits of reflection and resignation, aided by judicious reading, a penetration and delicacy quite unequalled. There was a philosophical truth in all her remarks, adorned by a feminine tact and extreme warmth of heart, that rendered her as admirable as she was endearing. Sometimes she suffered great pain, but, for the most part, her malady, which was connected with the spine, had only the effect of extreme weakness, and at the same time of rendering her sensations acute and delicate. The odour of flowers, the balmy air of morning, the evening breeze almost intoxicated her with delight; any dissonant sound appeared to shatter her—peace was within, and she coveted peace around; and it was her dearest pleasure when we—I and her lovely daughter—were at her feet, she playing with the sunny ringlets of Alithea's hair, and I listening, with a thirst for knowledge—and ardour to be taught; while she with eloquence mild and cheering, full of love and wisdom, charmed our attentive ears, and caused us to hang on all she said as on the oracles of a divinity.

"At times we left her, and Alithea and I wandered through the woods and over the hills; our talk was inexhaustible, now canvassing some observation of her mother, now pouring out our own youthful bright ideas, and enjoying the breezes and the waterfalls, and every sight of nature, with a rapture unspeakable. When we came to rugged uplands, or some swollen brook, I carried my young companion over in my arms; I sheltered her with my body from the storms that, sometimes overtook us. I was her protector and her stay; and the very office filled me with pride and joy. When fatigued by our rambles, we returned home, bringing garlands of wild flowers for the invalid, whose wisdom we revered, whose maternal tenderness was our joy; and yet, whose weakness made her, in some degree, dependant on us, and gave the form of a voluntary tribute to the attentions we delighted to pay her.

"Oh, had I never returned to school, this life had been a foretaste of heaven! but there I returned, and there again I found rebuke, injustice, my evil passions, and the fiends who tormented me. How my heart revolted from the contrast! with what inconceivable struggles I tried to subdue my hatred, to be as charitable and forgiving as Mrs. Rivers implored me to be; but my tormentors had the art of rousing the savage again, and, despite good resolves, despite my very pride, which urged me merely to despise, I was again violent and rebellious; again punished, again vowing revenge, and longing to obtain it. I cannot imagine—even the wild passions of my after life do not disclose—more violent struggles than those I went through. I returned from my friends, my heart stored with affectionate sentiments and good intentions; my brow was smooth, my mind unruffled; my whole soul set upon at once commanding myself, and proving to my tyrants that they could not disturb the sort of heavenly calm with which I was penetrated.

"On such a day, and feeling thus, I came back one evening from the cottage. I was met by one of the ushers, who, in a furious voice, demanded the key of my room, threatening me with punishment if I ever dared lock it again. This was a sore point; my little family of mice had their warm nest in my room, and I knew that they would be torn from me if the animal before me penetrated into my sanctuary before I could get in to hide them; but the fellow had learned from the maids that I had some pets, and was resolute to discover them. I cannot dwell on the puerile yet hideous minutiæ of such a scene; the loud voice, the blow, the key torn from me, the roar of malice with which my pets were hailed, the call for the cat. My blood ran cold; some slave—among boys even there are slaves—threw into the room the tiger animal; the usher showed her prey; but before she could spring I caught her up, and whirled her out of the window The usher gave me a blow with a stick; I was a well-grown boy, and a match for him unarmed; he struck me on the head, and then drew out a knife, that he might himself commence the butcher's work on my favourites: stunned by the blow, but casting aside all the cherished calm I had hitherto maintained, my blood boiling, my whole frame convulsed with passion, I sprung on him. We both fell on the ground, his knife was in hand, open; in our struggle I seized the weapon, and the fellow got cut in the head—of course I inflicted the wound; but had, neither before nor at that time, the intention; our struggle was furious; we were both in a state of phrensy, and an open knife at such a moment can hardly fail to do injury; I saw the blood pouring from his temple, and his efforts slacken. I jumped up, called furiously for help, and when the servants and boys rushed into the room, I made my escape. I leaped from the window, high as it was, and alighted, almost by a miracle, unhurt on the turf below; I made my way with all speed across the fields. Methought the guilt of murder was on my soul, and yet I felt exultation that at last I, a boy, had brought upon the head of my foe some of the tortures he had so often inflicted upon me. By this desperate act I believed that I had severed the cords that bound me to the vilest servitude. I knew not but that houseless want would be my reward, but I felt light as air and free as a bird.