Looking Back; a Memory of Two Lives

Front matter

LOOKING BACK. Are not tlie cowslips yellower that year, as I see myself with Stephen gathering them, aud pouring out our stores at Bridget's feet, as she sat unier the old thorn-tree by the river side. — Page 79. MtmatQ cf -yTtoo Puts BV MARY E. SHIPLEY AUTHOR OF "GABRIELLE VAUGHAN," "COUSIN DEBORAH'S WHIM," ETC, ETC, He who God's will hath borne and done, And his own restless longings stilled * What else he does or has foregone, His mission he hath well fulfilled." From tlie German. SEELEY, JACKSON, & HALLIDAY, 54, FLEET STREET LONDON. MDCCCLXXIX {The Right of Translation is Reserved.)

Chapter I

The other day I heard that the owner of a certain old castle had ordered workmen to cut the roots of the ivy which for many centuries has nearly covered with a mantle of dark beauty the ruin of its grand old keep, with a view to prevent the structure from going further to decay. What other acts of bar barism may be used to destroy the reverend beauty of the old pile I know not, but this was enough to rouse within me very sincere indignation and regret, besides taking me back to the time when I lived almost under the shadow of the old ivy-covered keep, crowning the hill-top with the venerable beauty of more than a thousand years. Such a quaint old town it was that clustered on the hill-side under the castle walls. All the houses of warm red brick, the tints mellowed with age, and the tall roofs of lichen-crusted tiles.

Such delightful old gardens behind them, all sloping in one direction or another — for I question if any of the houses were built on level ground — with high, thick walls shutting in trees of ancient date, and generally a thick growth of shrubs, holly, laurel, and laurus tinus, with their glossy leaves. And how black and rich the mould was, and how round and abun dant the well-clipped box-edgings of the flower borders ! In our own garden there was a large bay-tree, from one of whose branches hung the swing wherein I spent many dreamy hours in my childhood ; the gentle, easy motion to and fro encouraging the wondering moods in which I indulged a great deal too much for my own comfort, but which, as I had the misfortune to be an only child, with no one to care about what I thought or to sympathise with me in any way, I indulged without interruption, weaving wonderful and utterly impossible romances in my young brain, and growing up with very out of-the-way notions on most subjects.

It seems almost wrong, too, to say that I had no one to sympathise with me, for my dear grandfather would let me run on for an hour at a time with my questions, and never laugh at me, or tell me not to talk nonsense. But still he was very unsatisfying, inasmuch as he would own himself as puzzled on many subjects as I was ; and, being of a specula tive turn of mind himself, never felt quite at liberty to give any positive answers to my questions, which I know now must have been often of an utterly be wildering nature. And his " Don't trouble your little head, Dolly, with what no one can under stand," only made me wonder more ; for it seemed so odd to be living in a world, and yet to know so little about the working of it. The dear, kind old man ! It seems but yester day since I used to sit on his knee, and look into those dark, dreamy eyes of his, and think of all the wonderful things I would do for him when I grew up, not realising that he might then very probably no longer need the devotion I proposed to myself, and quite overlooking the fact that to be all I could to him then in the living, real present would be the truest service I could render.

Yet he seemed very old to me then, for sixty-five is a very advanced age to the childish mind, and I remember thinking my own seven years had stretched over an almost interminable period, whereof the beginning was lost in the mists of obscurity. I recollect one evening in particular at that time It was in March, and we — my aunt Monica, my grandfather, and I — were in his study after tea, I I — on my favourite perch on his knee, where I always felt secure from the snubbings of which (in justice to Aunt Monica) I must own I always had my full share ; and, as usual, I was plying him with every imaginable query which suggested itself to my mind, when he took a resolution which seemed to me very sudden and uncalled for. I suppose I had driven him to the verge of distrac tion, for when I gave utterance to a question which had so often presented itself to my mind as to be quite familiar to me, in the words, " I wonder who made God ?

I wonder if He made Himself?" he said suddenly, and, as it seemed to me, most irre levantly, " Monica ! this child must go to school." " Nonsense ! father. Have a governess for her ; that would be the best thing." " I hate a governess in the house," said my grandfather. Now this seemed to me so very strange. I had always been told it was wrong to hate any one, and yet here was my grandfather — the personifica tion to me of all things good and Christian — saying that he hated a governess in the house. But I for bore to express my astonishment. " It is hateful on all accounts," he went on, very much as if he had read my thoughts. " If she is made one of the family, then good-bye to all privacy and comfort ; and if she is shut up in the schoolroom, then what a weight upon one's con science she is : solitary confinement, and so forth.

No ! no ! that won't do." " But she would not be solitary," said Aunt Monica. " She would sleep in Dorothy's room and dress her ; then she would of course be with us at meals, but afterwards there would be lessons and walks. You could not call her lonely with not a moment to herself." " I would rather be a galley-slave at once," said my grandfather. Hereupon I burst into tears. " Why, what's the matter now ?" he said, gently drawing my head to its favourite resting-place, from which — when I was not crying — I used to contemplate with admiration the beautiful hem stitching on the frills of his shirt-front. " What's the matter now, my pet ?" " Am I so — so very dreadful, grandpapa, that — that to be always with me would be worse than being a galley-slave ?" I managed to get out between my sobs.

"Aunt Monica says I am a dreadful child, but I didn't know I was so bad as that. I wish — I wish — oh ! I do wish I were dead !" " Nonsense, Dolly ! You take things so seriously, child. It is one of the things you can't understand ; but you are not to blame for it," he added, stroking my hair. " There are so many things I can't understand," I sobbed. " I wish I could ; everything seems as it does when Bridget goes down in the mornings and I can't make out anything in the room." " Twilight ? Yes, that's what we grope about in mostly," said my grandfather. " Never mind ! this world is not everything," he added, as if to himself. " But about the governess ?" said Aunt Monica. " She shall go to Miss Minchin's," said my grandfather. " Nonsense !" " I was never more serious in my life." There was a long pause, during which in the silence Aunt Monica's knitting-needles clicked with great energy, and I felt my grandfather's left arm close round me, as it did sometimes for no apparent reason.

I was still feeling hurt and miserable at the idea of what a terrible punishment I should be to a governess, and the tears were falling quietly on the spotless shirt-front against which I leant; but I said nothing. I had that full confidence in my grandfather which was the result of my long life of seven years' experience, and I knew he would do what was kindest and best for me. The silence was broken at last by an expression of disgust from Aunt Monica, which took the form of a sentence, hissed out from between her teeth : " The associates she will meet with !" " They will do her no harm." " That is all you know about it ! An inquisitive, curious child like that will pick up an amount of evil which a lifetime will be too short to eradicate," she said, knitting faster than ever. I was accustomed to be snubbed, and to be con sidered by Aunt Monica of all naughty children the naughtiest ; but, nevertheless, such an openly ex pressed opinion always hurt me, and made me wish I had a mother who would love me in spite of my faults.

" I wish I could die ! oh, I wish I could die !" I sobbed passionately. " I can't think why I was ever born !" " Hush ! Don't be so wicked !" said Aunt Monica. But my grandfather only held me closer to him, and said gently, " My Dorothea must not talk like that." I understood what he meant to assure me of; indeed he never called me by my full name except at moments when he was himself feeling deeply. Ever since he had told me the meaning of my name, I had experienced a thrill of intense happi ness when he used it, for I knew he felt I was God's gift to him. The word came like a gleam of sunlight across the cloudy sky of my life, and I said no more ; only I listened intently to what passed between him and Aunt Monica. " A school might be the best place for her, if there happened to be one fit for her, with a lady at the head, and pupils she might mix with — not butchers' and bakers' children like Miss Minchin's." " She will get no harm," said my grandfather.

" She is a Dissenter, too," said Aunt Monica, as if this must settle the matter. " She is a very worthy woman," said my grandfather, " and I shall call upon her myself. It is quite time something was done for the child." " She can read," said Aunt Monica, " not badly for a girl of her age, and she could do better if she chose." This was one of the unjust opinions which troubled me as a child. Aunt Monica never gave me credit for doing my best. Whether she thought praise would make me conceited, I cannot say ; certainly she never tried me with it. Some thing in me always rebelled against injustice, and I said hastily, " I can write too, Aunt Monica ! You forget that !" " Yes, I know you can write, Dorothy ; but I wonder you are not ashamed to own it." Now, I always failed to see the shame in con nection with my being able to write, which Aunt Monica always attached to it.

Certainly, I had taught myself, but I had not done it in any deceitful spirit, though it was, perhaps, presumptuous in me to do anything which she had not ordered me to do. Still, I know I had a very sensitive con science, and as it had left me quite undisturbed while mastering in private — on odd slips of paper and on my slate — the mysteries of caligraphy, I cannot think that I was really doing wrong. She had never forbidden me to learn, only she had refused to teach me, and as I was always possessed with the idea that everything she did for me was a trouble to her, I had applied the remedy in my own hands, and taught myself. It was an odd kind of writing, certainly, and I held my pen after a fashion peculiar to myself, but I could write ; and I felt she was underrating my acquirements when she mentioned being able to read as the sum total.

Poor Aunt Monica ! I suppose I was a dreadful trouble to her, and perhaps as there was no tie of relationship between us, it was scarcely likely she should feel much natural love for me. My grandfather's first wife had been a widow with this one daughter, when he married her, and though she always called him " father," and treated him out wardly with a certain degree of respect as was only proper to her mother's husband, still, it is only reasonable to infer that her real, true, filial affec tion had all expended itself on the father who had fallen in battle in a war, which even in my childhood had become a matter of history, and whose miniature on ivory in full regi mentals she had always on the mantelpiece of her room. Her mother died two years after her marriage with my grandfather, and not very long afterwards he married again ; this time the lady who had been his first love, but who, for some reason or other, which I never knew, had not been free be fore.

My old nurse, Bridget, has told me how happy they were together, and what a terrible blow it was to him when she died, leaving a little son only three months old. Upon this child he lavished a degree of affection which approached as near worship as Bridget could conceive, and the good woman was accustomed to say that, with the best intentions in the world, his father spoilt him. He was intended for the bar, but from what Bridget told me, I gathered that he gave that up and went on the stage under an assumed name. He made a runaway marriage with a clergyman's daughter, and in less than a year he died. Soon afterwards, I, a motherless baby of five days, was sent to my* grandfather under Bridget's care, and he had had the charge of me ever since. He chose my name for me, and henceforward all his hopes and happiness (so far as human hopes and happiness go) centred in me.

Perhaps it was not to be wondered at that his step-daughter should be jealous. She always seemed to me a great age, but I do not believe in reality she was more than forty at the time of which I am writing, when I was seven, and it was thought expedient to send me to school. Of course at that early stage of my existence I knew nothing of my parents ; I was nearly grown up before Bridget told me what I have just re corded. When I was a child, a cloud of mystery enshrouded all relating to the mother I cried for in the dark nights when I could not sleep, and the father whom I had never seen. I had endless fancies about them, but any attempt to learn anything re specting them was instantly quenched by Aunt Monica ; so that, added to the mystery, there was an indefinable idea of something wrong, which had the effect of making me feel as if my very existence was a thing to be regretted, if not actually wicked in itself.

Sometimes, as I look back upon the little in quisitive, restless, but intensely loving child weaving all sorts of mysteries in her lonely mind, I forget that it was myself, and feel a pity for her and a longing to comfort and help her. Then I suddenly remember that I am the same restless, inquisitive being that fought so resolutely with the darkness and would not be quieted ; and that all the years which have passed since then have failed to render my heart less loving, if perhaps less impetuous, than when my Aunt Monica's openly expressed dislike and horror of me wounded me till I blindly wished myself dead, for that in one's childhood seems the remedy for all things. Yet I was inconsistent too ; for I used to think sometimes about dying till the thought drove sleep away from me, and in the darkness I could almost hear my heart beat, as I lay with tightly-closed eyes, fearing I knew not what, and saying over and over again the "Evening Hymn" in a vain attempt to quiet myself.

But it would not soothe me. The "powers of darkness," of which one verse spoke, took frightful shapes in my imagination, and certainly molested my waking moments, while I entirely misunderstood two lines from one of the verses : " Teach me to live that I may dread The grave as little as my bed." It was years before I grasped the meaning of it — that the thing desirable was that the thought ofthe grave should have no more terror in it than the bed whereon each night I lay down to rest. To my mind, it was a prayer that I might dread the grave which in size was as little as my bed, and so a horror came over me whenever I used the words. But that was only at night. In the daytime I loved to wander among the old grey tombs and long green mounds in the churchyard ; and think how quiet it was, and try to fancy how it would be to lie there so still while the birds sang overhead and the sun shone, and the flowers grew and blossomed, and from the old church tower the clock chimed the quarters with a mellow sound of music on the peaceful air.

I have never met with another churchyard like that at Wimberley. It was large, but it only lay on the south and west of the church. It was en closed in a stone wall, above which rose a quick-set hedge, whose perfection of roundness I have never seen equalled. Tall trees, sycamores and elms for the most part, but mixed with them, laburnums, mountain-ash, copper-beech, and hawthorn, both pink and white, grew above this hedge, and the very entrance was picturesque ; for the trees on either side bent over and made a natural archway above the gate through which we passed into the churchyard. The church itself was a beautiful old building, rich with carving and tracery of a bygone age, but the interior was disfigured by hideous galleries, square pews, and other enormities. Nevertheless I grew to love even the ugliness as part of the church at whose font I was christened, and within whose walls I first worshipped.

Memories come back to me of the " Morning Hymn " sung at broad noonday, when the sun was far advanced on his daily stage of duty ; and I never hear " Rockingham " without a vision of the quiet chancel, and the fair white cloth on which the sacred and mysterious Feast was spread : while " Luther's Hymn " recalls the gathering, solemn, trembling darkness of early winter after noons when Advent had begun, quite as vividly as the collects for Lent bring back the lengthening spring evenings when Aunt Monica used to take me to church on Wednesdays and Fridays, and afterwards we walked a little on the road beyond it. There were high banks on each side of this road, and on the highest, which was the sunny one, were two little milk-white paths, which children's feet had trodden in the chalk, and by which, under little stumpy thorn-bushes, the shy lizards used to bask in the warm noon sunshine, and where, on the spring evenings after sunset, were to be found beautiful daisy-buds, all crimson-tipped, such as we never saw in the broad daylight.

It took a deal of disappointing experience to convince me that these were not really pink daisies. Evening after evening I gathered some and put them in water, and morning after morning I awoke to see them wide awake too, with their yellow eyes, but with the pink fringes underneath only, and looking far paler spread out and distributed than when close folded together for the night. There were daisies in the churchyard too, and deep purple violets growing over the graves, as if they loved to deck with fragrant beauty the quiet resting-places of the dead. But the wall-flowers were my great admiration. We had them in the garden at home, but then they required setting and transplanting, whereas these which clustered round the old tombs, and sprang out of the chinks in the stone of the porch, and on the walls of the old church, grew of their own accord, and made the whole air around delicious.

There were snap-dragons too on the walls and roof, and about the sundial over the porch, while roses and honeysuckle made a graceful drapery over the deep arched windows, and twined round the grinning gargoyles under the leads. Those dreadful gargoyles ! I used to think the very stone must ache with the unearthly grimaces they made, and whenever I used to imitate them (and I believe I showed a certain aptitude in the accomplishment) I could always be stopped by Bridget's saying, in that solemn tone she could assume on occasion : " I declare you'll be struck so, miss, if you don't leave off !" For the endlessness of the ache in the distorted cheeks smote my soul with terror, and my face was itself again in no time. It was not a particularly pretty face at the best of times, I was aware, and I felt it advisable to run no risk of its becomine worse.

Aunt Monica said it was an ugly face because of the freckles on it, and a disposition of the nose to turn upwards instead of downwards as did her own. Besides, she said my mouth was too large, and she could never admire grey eyes. She did indeed allow that my forehead was broad and good ; but then I felt that a very doubtful advantage, as I was never told so except when my lessons were not known, or I could not master my sums. " You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Dorothy, with such a forehead, not to know in what year the Great Fire took place ;" or, " What is the good of a sensible brow if you can't take fourteen from sixty-three, and tell me the result at once, without frowning so terribly ?" If I hemmed my pocket-handkerchiefs unevenly I was reminded that I possessed the organ of Form, and that consequently what might be excusable in another child was unpardonable in me, while I was frequently told that I might as well be without a forehead as with one, for all the good it did me.

It has struck me since that my active imagination and my inquisitiveness were never excused on the ground of corresponding development in my un fortunate head ; and I certainly was no more to blame for possessing the bump of Ideality than I was for having the organ of Form. Of course I could not put all this into words at that time ; but I felt the injustice of it, and " I wish I had no forehead !" was said quite often enough for Bridget to grow very expert in preaching little extempore sermons on the subject — all with a thrilling effect. As to my hair, it was dark and thick, and had the recommendation of being guiltless of any disposition to wave or curl, thus saving a deal of trouble, for it was cut short and put smoothly behind my ears till I was quite a great girl. For the rest, I know I was an untidy child, tear ing my frocks and wearing out my shoes in a fashion enough to try the patience of a more for bearing person than Aunt Monica, and sure always to attract towards me, as by magnetism, all stray bits of grease waiting for development in smears, and certain to stain my summer prints and muslins with fruit, if at all possible to do so.

I remember one unfortunate bonnet I had. It was of pink silk, folded, and was so large that no one sitting by my side could possibly have seen my profile ; but then, as Aunt Monica used to say severely, I had no profile to be seen, so that may be no measure for the size of the bonnet. However, if that coveted beauty had been mine, I believe it would have been quite as invisible under this deep pink shade. It was in the blackberry season, and in a moment of weakness Aunt Monica had allowed me to take off my gloves and gather some of the ripe fruit on our way to call on Colonel Malcolm's widow, who lived a mile out of Wimberley, on the London Road. Of course, in reaching up to the hedge my bonnet tumbled back, and, by another law of nature, I as quickly pulled it on again. My fingers were wet with blackberry juice, though that of course I never thought of; but the consequences were, to say the least, serious.

Looking back, Aunt Monica saw this little busi ness of falling off and pulling on again, and imme diately bade me leave off gathering blackberries. " How often have I told you," she said, " never to pull on your bonnet in that fashion ? — it utterly spoils the shape. Come, you have gathered enough." Hastily scrambling down the bank, my bonnet was jerked back again, and, in obedience to Aunt Monica, I refrained from pulling it ; but as it was necessary to do something, I pushed it on with my disengaged hand, and felt myself a paragon of wisdom. Unfortunately, the hand I had used was even more wet and stained than the other had been, so that the marks of four fingers, neatly printed in deep purple, were left on the unhappy pink crown. Aunt Monica was dreadfully angry. She sent me on before, and alternately scolded me for the bonnet, and told me not to walk on my heels, till we got to Mrs. Malcolm's. I was always so conscious of my feet when I was with Aunt Monica.

At other times I never thought whether to set down toes or heels first ; but with o --> her I have no doubt I walked in a manner which was torture to her eyes. For I knocked my ankles together and turned my toes in, while taking marvellous care to use my heels as little as possible, and wondering all the while how the horses and cows did with their four legs, poor things ! only, happily, they had no one to find fault with them. Our old dog Frisk managed the difficulty in a very easy manner, for he never walked on more than three legs at a time, and as he was constantly changing the uplifted member he equalised the fatigue most charmingly. But there was no help for it in my case, and I trudged on, very downcast about my bonnet, and wishing I could be like the cows, who were able to walk without being taught.

To make matters worse that afternoon, kind old Mrs. Malcolm had just brought me a parasol from London, and as I had never possessed one before, I was nearly beside myself with joy when she gave it to me. It was of green silk, shot with crimson, and had a deep fringe. Unfortunately, Aunt Monica's keen sense of justice impelled her to inform Mrs. Malcolm of my misdeeds with regard to my bonnet, and, perhaps more unfortunately still, Mrs. Malcolm only said, " Poor child !" instead of taking Aunt Monica's view of the case. I thought my horizon was brightening as I walked home with the parasol in my hand, held in exactly the opposite direction to that in which the warm August sun was shining. But my satisfaction was short-lived. On reaching home, before I could even show it to Bridget, the parasol was taken from me and placed in Aunt Monica's wardrobe, where it stayed two whole years.

For, as the condition made was that I should have it when I had learnt to wear a bonnet without spoiling it, I certainly could not claim it under that period. I remember now my delight when it was at length disentombed from the shawls and cloaks on the wardrobe shelf. I recollect, too, that Aunt Monica was bending down over one of the drawers when I opened my long-waited-for possession, and that my first act was to poke one of the whalebone points by acci dent into her eye. But I have strayed far away from the study wherein that spring evening my grandfather had stated his decision to send me to school ; and Aunt Monica wondered (not for the first time, however,) that I was not ashamed of owning that I knew how to write. I made no answer to her remark, and as my grandfather took up the " Quarterly," and began to read, I let my eyes roam round the room, as was rather, their habit when I was on his knee.