Passion and wounded pride drew from me burning tears. I felt that I was growing fierce and hard like my persecutors, and my conscience, yet tender, deplored the lamentable change. My heart, crushed beneath the sense of injustice and unmerited neglect, was closed against the best feelings of humanity, and I regarded my fellow men with aversion and mistrust.
These bitter and desponding feelings deprived my nights of rest—my days, of hope. When the morning came and I took my stand at the accursed desk, I wished the day gone; and when night released me from the abhorrent task, and I sought my humble garret, I sat for hours at the open window, brooding over my wrongs.
The moonbeams glittered in the tears that anguish wrung from my upturned eyes. The stars seemed to look down upon me with compassionate earnestness. Sometimes my young spirit, carried away by the intense love I felt for those beautiful eyes of heaven, forgot for awhile the sorrows and cares of life and soared far, far away to seek for sympathy and affection in those unknown regions of light and purity.
I had few opportunities of religious instruction in this truly Godless household. My uncle never attended church when he could avoid the obligation, and then, only to keep up appearances—a religion of the world; in which the heart had no part. There was always a Bible in the office, but it was never used but in the way of business to administer oaths. Whenever I had a moment's leisure I had turned over the pages with eager and mysterious curiosity, but the knowledge that should have brought peace and comfort, and reconciled me to my dreary lot, not being sought for in the right spirit, added to my present despondency, the dread of future punishment.
Oh, that awful fear of Hell. How it darkened with its unholy shadow, all that was bright and beautiful in the lower world. I had yet to learn, that perfect love casteth out fear, that the great Father punishes but to reform, and is ever more willing to save than to condemn. I dared not seek Him, lest I should hear the terrible denunciation thundered against the wicked: "Depart from me, ye cursed!"
A firm trust in His protecting care would have been a balm for every wound which festered and rankled at my heart's core. Had the Christian's hope been mine, I should no longer have pined under that dreary sense of utter loneliness, which for many years paralyzed all mental exertions, or nurtured in my breast the stern unforgiving temper which made me regard my persecutors with feelings of determined hate.
Residing in the centre of the busy metropolis, and at an age when the heart sighs for social communion with its fellows, and imagines, with the fond sincerity of inexperienced youth, a friend in every agreeable companion, I was immured among old parchments and dusty records, and seldom permitted to mingle with the guests who frequented my uncle's house, unless my presence was required to sign some official document.
Few persons suspected that the shabbily-dressed silent youth who obeyed Mr. Moncton's imperious mandates was his nephew—the only son of an elder brother; consequently I was treated as nobody by his male visitors, and never noticed at all by the ladies.
This was mortifying enough to a tall lad of eighteen, who already fancied himself a man: who, though meanly dressed, and sufficiently awkward, had enough of vanity in his composition to imagine that his person would create an interest in his behalf and atone for all other deficiencies, at least in the eyes of the gentler sex—those angels, who seen at a distance, were daily becoming objects of admiration and worship.
Alas! Poor Geoffrey. Thou didst not know in that thy young day the things pertaining to thy peace. Thou didst not suspect in thy innocence how the black brand of poverty can deform the finest face, and dim the brightest intellect in the eyes of the world.