What do I know of Hoghton
Towers? Very little; for I have been gratefully unwilling
to disturb my first impressions. A house, centuries old, on
high ground a mile or so removed from the road between Preston
and Blackburn, where the first James of England, in his hurry to
make money by making baronets, perhaps made some of those
remunerative dignitaries. A house, centuries old, deserted
and falling to pieces, its woods and gardens long since
grass-land or ploughed up, the Rivers Ribble and Darwen glancing
below it, and a vague haze of smoke, against which not even the
supernatural prescience of the first Stuart could foresee a
counter-blast, hinting at steam-power, powerful in two
distances.
What did I know then of Hoghton Towers? When I first
peeped in at the gate of the lifeless quadrangle, and started
from the mouldering statue becoming visible to me like its
guardian ghost; when I stole round by the back of the farm-house,
and got in among the ancient rooms, many of them with their
floors and ceilings falling, the beams and rafters hanging
dangerously down, the plaster dropping as I trod, the oaken
panels stripped away, the windows half walled up, half broken;
when I discovered a gallery commanding the old kitchen, and
looked down between balustrades upon a massive old table and
benches, fearing to see I know not what dead-alive creatures come
in and seat themselves, and look up with I know not what dreadful
eyes, or lack of eyes, at me; when all over the house I was awed
by gaps and chinks where the sky stared sorrowfully at me, where
the birds passed, and the ivy rustled, and the stains of winter
weather blotched the rotten floors; when down at the bottom of
dark pits of staircase, into which the stairs had sunk, green
leaves trembled, butterflies fluttered, and bees hummed in and
out through the broken door-ways; when encircling the whole ruin
were sweet scents, and sights of fresh green growth, and
ever-renewing life, that I had never dreamed of,—I say,
when I passed into such clouded perception of these things as my
dark soul could compass, what did I know then of Hoghton
Towers?
I have written that the sky stared sorrowfully at me.
Therein have I anticipated the answer. I knew that all
these things looked sorrowfully at me; that they seemed to sigh
or whisper, not without pity for me, ‘Alas! poor worldly
little devil!’
There were two or three rats at the bottom of one of the
smaller pits of broken staircase when I craned over and looked
in. They were scuffling for some prey that was there; and,
when they started and hid themselves close together in the dark,
I thought of the old life (it had grown old already) in the
cellar.
How not to be this worldly little devil? how not to have a
repugnance towards myself as I had towards the rats? I hid
in a corner of one of the smaller chambers, frightened at myself,
and crying (it was the first time I had ever cried for any cause
not purely physical), and I tried to think about it. One of
the farm-ploughs came into my range of view just then; and it
seemed to help me as it went on with its two horses up and down
the field so peacefully and quietly.
There was a girl of about my own age in the farm-house family,
and she sat opposite to me at the narrow table at
meal-times. It had come into my mind, at our first dinner,
that she might take the fever from me. The thought had not
disquieted me then. I had only speculated how she would
look under the altered circumstances, and whether she would
die. But it came into my mind now, that I might try to
prevent her taking the fever by keeping away from her. I
knew I should have but scrambling board if I did; so much the
less worldly and less devilish the deed would be, I thought.
From that hour, I withdrew myself at early morning into secret
corners of the ruined house, and remained hidden there until she
went to bed. At first, when meals were ready, I used to
hear them calling me; and then my resolution weakened. But
I strengthened it again by going farther off into the ruin, and
getting out of hearing. I often watched for her at the dim
windows; and, when I saw that she was fresh and rosy, felt much
happier.
Out of this holding her in my thoughts, to the humanising of
myself, I suppose some childish love arose within me. I
felt, in some sort, dignified by the pride of protecting
her,—by the pride of making the sacrifice for her. As
my heart swelled with that new feeling, it insensibly softened
about mother and father. It seemed to have been frozen
before, and now to be thawed. The old ruin and all the
lovely things that haunted it were not sorrowful for me only, but
sorrowful for mother and father as well. Therefore did I
cry again, and often too.
The farm-house family conceived me to be of a morose temper,
and were very short with me; though they never stinted me in such
broken fare as was to be got out of regular hours. One
night when I lifted the kitchen latch at my usual time, Sylvia
(that was her pretty name) had but just gone out of the
room. Seeing her ascending the opposite stairs, I stood
still at the door. She had heard the clink of the latch,
and looked round.
‘George,’ she called to me in a pleased voice,
‘to-morrow is my birthday; and we are to have a fiddler,
and there’s a party of boys and girls coming in a cart, and
we shall dance. I invite you. Be sociable for once,
George.’
‘I am very sorry, miss,’ I answered; ‘but
I—but, no; I can’t come.’
‘You are a disagreeable, ill-humoured lad,’ she
returned disdainfully; ‘and I ought not to have asked
you. I shall never speak to you again.’
As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire, after she was gone,
I felt that the farmer bent his brows upon me.
‘Eh, lad!’ said he; ‘Sylvy’s
right. You’re as moody and broody a lad as never I
set eyes on yet.’
I tried to assure him that I meant no harm; but he only said
coldly, ‘Maybe not, maybe not! There, get thy supper,
get thy supper; and then thou canst sulk to thy heart’s
content again.’
Ah! if they could have seen me next day, in the ruin, watching
for the arrival of the cart full of merry young guests; if they
could have seen me at night, gliding out from behind the ghostly
statue, listening to the music and the fall of dancing feet, and
watching the lighted farm-house windows from the quadrangle when
all the ruin was dark; if they could have read my heart, as I
crept up to bed by the back way, comforting myself with the
reflection, ‘They will take no hurt from
me,’—they would not have thought mine a morose or an
unsocial nature.
It was in these ways that I began to form a shy disposition;
to be of a timidly silent character under misconstruction; to
have an inexpressible, perhaps a morbid, dread of ever being
sordid or worldly. It was in these ways that my nature came
to shape itself to such a mould, even before it was affected by
the influences of the studious and retired life of a poor
scholar.
