Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

3

can't tell how far2 she may resent any slight that seems to be offered to her favourite niece. However, I'll do the best I can for you. You shall go and break the matter to her first, and by the time I may suppose that your rhetoric has prevailed on her to listen to reason,5 I will step in to reinforce your arguments.

Sir John. I'll fly to her immediately; you promise me your assistance?

Sterl. I do.7

Sir John. Ten thousand thanks for it! and now success attend me!

[Going.8 Sterl. Hark'e, Sir John! [SIR JOHN returns.9] Not a word of the thirty thousand to my sister, Sir John. Sir John. Oh, I am dumb, I am dumb, sir. [Going. Sterl. You'll remember it is thirty thousand. Sir John. To be sure I do.

Sterl. But, Sir John!-one thing more.1 10 [SIR JOHN returns.] My Lord must know nothing of this stroke of friendship between us.

Sir John. Not for the world. Let me alone!11 Le me alone! [Offering to go Sterl. [Holding him.] And when everything is agreed, we must give each other a bond to be held fast to the 1 bargain.

Sir John. To be sure. or whatever you please.

A bond by all means! 13 a bond,

[Exit hastily.

Sterl. I should have thought of more conditions—he's

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

in a humour to give me everything-why, what mere children are your fellows of quality; that cry for a plaything one minute, and throw it by the next! as changeable as the weather, and as uncertain as the stocks.1 Special fellows to drive a bargain! and yet they are to take care of the interest of the nation, truly! Here does this whirligig man of fashion offer3 to give up thirty thousand pounds in hard money, with as much indifference as if it was a china orange.5 By this mortgage, I shall have a hold on his terra firma; and if he wants more money, as he certainly will,7-let him have children by my daughter or not, I shall have his whole estate in a net9 for the benefit of my family.

THE NATIVE VILLAGE.

A KIND of dread had hitherto kept me back; but I was restless now, till I had accomplished my wish. I set out one morning to walk; I reached Widford about eleven in the forenoon; after a slight breakfast at my inn, where I was mortified to perceive the old landlord did not know me again (old Thomas Billet, he has often made anglerods 10 for me when a child), I rambled over all my accustomed haunts.

Our old house was vacant, and to be sold; I entered, unmolested, into the room that had been my bed-chamber. I kneeled down on the spot where my little bed had stood: I felt like a child; I prayed like one. It seemed as

[blocks in formation]

though old times were to return again.1 I looked round involuntarily, expecting to see some face I knew; but all was naked and mute. The bed was gone. My little pane of painted window, through which I loved to look at the sun, when I awoke in a fine summer's morning, was taken out, and had been replaced by one of common glass.

I visited by turns every chamber; they were all desolate and unfurnished, one excepted,2 in which the owner had left a harpsichord, probably to be sold: I touched the keys; I played some old Scottish tunes, which had delighted me when a child. Past associations revived with the music; blended with a sense of unreality, which at last became too powerful, I rushed out of the room to give vent to my feelings.

I wandered, scarce knowing where, into an old wood, that stands at the back of the house; we called it the Wilderness. A well-known form was missing that used to meet me in this place: it was thine, Ben Moxam, the kindest, gentlest, politest of human beings, yet was he nothing higher than a gardener in the family. Honest creature, thou didst never pass me in my childish rambles without a soft speech and a smile. I remember thy good-natured face. But there is one thing for which I can never forgive thee,5 Ben Moxam, that thou didst join with an old maiden aunt of mine in a cruel plot to lop away the hanging branches of the old fir-trees. I remember them sweeping to the ground.7

I have often left my childish sports to ramble in this place; its glooms and its solitude had a mysterious charm for my young mind, nurturing within me that love of quietness and lonely thinking, which have accompanied me to maturer years.

[blocks in formation]

In this Wilderness I found myself after a ten years absence. Its stately fir-trees were yet standing, with all their luxuriant company of underwood: the squirrel was there, and1 the melancholy cooings of the wood-pigeon; all was as I had left it; my heart softened at the sight; it seemed as though my character had been suffering a change since I forsook these shades.

My parents2 were both dead; I had no counsellor left, no experience of age to direct me, no sweet voice of reproof. The Lord had taken away my friends, and I knew not where he had laid them. I paced round the wilderness, seeking a comforter. I prayed, that I might be restored to that state of innocence in which I had wandered in those shades.

3

Methought my request was heard; for it seemed as though the stains of manhood were passing from me, and I were relapsing into the purity and simplicity of childhood. I was content to have been moulded into a perfect child. I stood still as in a trance. I dreamed that I was enjoying a personal intercourse with my heavenly Father, and, extravagantly,5 put off the shoes from my feet; for the place where I stood, I thought, was holy ground.

This state of mind could not last long, and I returned, with languid feelings, to my inn. I ordered my dinner, green peas and a sweetbread: it had been a favourite dish with me in my childhood; I was allowed to have it on my birth-days. I was impatient to see it come upon table; but, when it came, I could scarce eat a mouthful; my tears choked me. I called for wine; I drank a pint and a half of red wine, and not till then had I

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

dared to visit the churchyard, where my parents were interred.

The cottage lay in2 my way. Margaret had chosen it for that very reason, to be near the church; for the old lady was regular in her attendance on public worship. I passed on, and in a moment found myself among the tombs.

I had been present at my father's burial, and knew the spot again; my mother's funeral I was prevented by illness from attending: a plain stone was placed over the grave, with their initials carved upon it,5 for they both occupied one grave.

I prostrated myself before the spot; I kissed the earth that covered them; I contemplated with gloomy delight the time when I should mingle my dust with theirs, and kneeled, with my arms incumbent on the grave-stone, in a kind of mental prayer: for I could not speak.

6

Having performed these duties, I arose with quieter feelings, and felt leisure to attend to indifferent objects. Still I continued in the churchyard, reading the various inscriptions, and moralizing upon them with that kind of levity which will not unfrequently spring up in the mind in the midst of deep melancholy. I read of nothing but careful parents, loving husbands, and dutiful children. said jestingly, where be all the bad people buried ?8 Bad parents, bad husbands, bad children, what cemeteries are

I

1 and it was only after that page 89 (the present case, however, that I dared to go.' is within the rule). The abovementioned exception with regard to

2 sur.

3 Je continuai ma route; or, Je tout, takes place:-1st, when tout is passai outre.

4 Remember that this construction is not French.

5 'upon it,' dessus.

6 not unfrequently,' assez souvent.-'will; see page 45, note 4. 7 On n'y faisait mention que de. 8 Où enterre-t-on donc toutes les mauvaises gens? See p. 89, n.

10

When the adjective tout precedes gens, it sometimes forms, by being put in the masculine, an exception to the rule mentioned at

the only adjective which precedes, as tous (masc.) les gens; and, 2nd, when tout, though not being the only adjective preceding, is coupled with another adjective which has the same termination for both genders, as tous (masc.) les habiles gens, tous (masc.) les jeunes gens;—but we must say, as above, toutes (fem.) les mauvaises gens, as the adjective mauvais (masc.) has a different termination (mauvaise) in the feminine.

« iepriekšējāTurpināt »