 | GRAVE REFLECTIONS
OF
A DISAPPOINTED MAN. Tales of a traveller |  |
GRAVE REFLECTIONS
OF
A DISAPPOINTED MAN.
Mr. Buckthorne had paused at the death
of his uncle, and the downfall of his great expectations,
which formed, as he said, an epoch
in his history; and it was not until some little
time afterwards, and in a very sober mood, that
he resumed his parti-coloured narrative.
After leaving the domains of my defunct uncle,
said he, when the gate closed between me and
what was once to have been mine, I felt thrust
out naked into the world, and completely abandoned
to fortune. What was to become of me?
I had been brought up to nothing but expectations,
and they had all been disappointed. I
had no relations to look to for counsel or assistance.
from me. Wave after wave of relationship had
ebbed off, and I was left a mere hulk upon the
strand. I am not apt to be greatly cast down,
but at this time I felt sadly disheartened. I
could not realize my situation, nor form a conjecture
how I was to get forward.
I was now to endeavour to make money.
The idea was new and strange to me. It was
like being asked to discover the philosophers'
stone. I had never thought about money, other
than to put my hand into my pocket and find it,
or if there were none there, to wait until a new
supply came from home. I had considered life
as a mere space of time to be filled up with enjoyments;
but to have it portioned out into long
hours and days of toil, merely that I might gain
bread to give me strength to toil on; to labour
but for the purpose of perpetuating a life of labour
was new and appalling to me. This may
appear a very simple matter to some, but it will
be understood by every unlucky wight in my predicament,
born to great expectations.
I passed several days in rambling about the
scenes of my boyhood; partly because I absolutely
did not know what to do with myself, and
partly because I did not know that I should ever
see them again. I clung to them as one clings
to a wreck, though he knows he must eventually
cast himself loose and swim for his life. I sat down
on a hill within sight of my paternal home, but
I did not venture to approach it, for I felt compunction
at the thoughtlessness with which I had
dissipated my patrimony. But was I to blame,
when I had the rich possessions of my curmudgeon
of an uncle in expectation?
The new possessor of the place was making
great alterations. The house was almost rebuilt.
The trees which stood about it were cut down;
my mother's flower-garden was thrown into a
lawn; all was undergoing a change. I turned
my back upon it with a sigh, and rambled to another
part of the country.
How thoughtful a little adversity makes one,
I had so often been flogged in the cause of wisdom,
you would hardly have recognized the truant
boy who but a few years since had eloped so
heedlessly from its walls. I leaned over the paling
of the play ground, and watched the scholars
at their games, and looked to see if there might
not be some urchin among them, like I was once,
full of gay dreams about life and the world. The
play ground seemed smaller than when I used to
sport about it. The house and park, too, of the
neighbouring squire, the father of the cruel Sacharissa,
had shrunk in size and diminished in
magnificence. The distant hills no longer appeared
so far off, and, alas! no longer awakened
ideas of a fairy land beyond.
As I was rambling pensively through a neighbouring
meadow, in which I had many a time
gathered primroses, I met the very pedagogue
who had been the tyrant and dread of my boyhood.
I had sometimes vowed to myself, when
suffering under his rod, that I would have my
revenge if ever I met him when I had grown to
disposition to keep my vow. The few years
which had matured me into a vigorous man had
shrunk him into decrepitude. He appeared to
have had a paralytic stroke. I looked at him,
and wondered that this poor helpless mortal
could have been an object of terror to me! That
I should have watched with anxiety the glance
of that failing eye, or dreaded the power of that
trembling hand! He tottered feebly along the
path, and had some difficulty in getting over a
style. I ran and assisted him. He looked at me
with surprise, but did not recognize me, and made
a low bow of humility and thanks. I had no
disposition to make myself known, for I felt that
I had nothing to boast of. The pains he had
taken and the pains he had inflicted had been
equally useless. His repeated predictions were
fully verified, and I felt that little Jack Buckthorne,
the idle boy, had grown up to be a very
good-for-nothing man.
This is all very comfortless detail; but as I have
how for once I was schooled for them.
The most thoughtless of mortals will some
time or other have this day of gloom, when he
will be compelled to reflect. I felt on this occasion
as if I had a kind of penance to perform,
and I made a pilgrimage in expiation of my past
levity.
Having passed a night at Leamington, I set
off by a private path which leads up a hill,
through a grove, and across quiet fields, until I
came to the small village, or rather hamlet of
Lenington. I sought the village church. It is
an old low edifice of gray stone on the brow of a
small hill, looking over fertile fields to where
the proud towers of Warwick Castle lift themselves
against the distant horizon. A part of
the church yard is shaded by large trees. Under
one of these my mother lay buried. You have,
no doubt, thought me a light, heartless being.
I thought myself so—but there are moments of
adversity which let us into some feelings of our
nature, to which we might otherwise remain
perpetual strangers.
I sought my mother's grave. The weeds
were already matted over it, and the tombstone
was half hid among nettles. I cleared them
away and they stung my hands; but I was heedless
of the pain, for my heart ached too severely.
I sat down on the grave, and read over and over
again the epitaph on the stone. It was simple,
but it was true. I had written it myself. I had
tried to write a poetical epitaph, but in vain; my
feelings refused to utter themselves in rhyme.
My heart had gradually been filling during my
lonely wanderings; it was now charged to the
brim and overflowed. I sank upon the grave
and buried my face in the tall grass and wept
like a child. Yes, I wept in manhood upon the
grave, as I had in infancy upon the bosom of my
mother, Alas! how little do we appreciate a
mother's tenderness while living! How heedless
are we, in youth, of all her anxieties and
kindness. But when she is dead and gone;
when the cares and coldness of the world
come withering to our hearts; when we find how
hard it is to find true sympathy, how few love
our misfortunes; then it is we think of the mother
we have lost. It is true I had always loved
my mother, even in my most heedless days; but
I felt how inconsiderate and ineffectual had
been my love. My heart melted as I retraced
the days of infancy, when I was led by a mother's
hand, and rocked to sleep in a mother's arms,
and was without care or sorrow. “Oh, my mother!”
exclaimed I, burying my face again in
the grass of the grave—“Oh, that I were once
more by your side; sleeping, never to wake
again, on the cares and troubles of this world!”
I am not naturally of a morbid temperament,
and the violence of my emotion gradually exhausted
itself. It was a hearty, honest, natural,
discharge of griefs which had been slowly accumulating,
and gave me wonderful relief. I rose
from the grave as if I had been offering up a
sacrifice, and I felt as if that sacrifice had been
accepted.
I sat down again on the grass, and plucked,
one by one, the weeds from her grave; the tears
ceased to be bitter. It was a comfort to think
that she had died before sorrow and poverty
came upon her child, and that all his great expectations
were blasted.
I leaned my cheek upon my hand and looked
upon the landscape. Its quiet beauty soothed
me. The whistle of a peasant from an adjoining
field came cheerily to my ear. I seemed to
respire hope and comfort with the free air that
whispered through the leaves and played lightly
with my hair, and dried the tears upon my
cheek. A lark, rising from the field before me,
and leaving, as it were, a stream of song behind
him as he rose, lifted my fancy with him. He
hovered in the air just above the place where the
towers of Warwick Castle marked the horizon;
and seemed as if fluttering with delight at his
own melody. “Surely,” thought I, “if there
were such a thing as transmigration of souls, this
might be taken for some poet, let loose from
earth, but still revelling in song, and carrolling
about fair fields and lordly towns.”
At this moment the long forgotten feeling of
poetry rose within me. A thought sprung at
once into my mind: “I will become an author,”
said I. “I have hitherto indulged in poetry as
a pleasure, and it has brought me nothing but
pain. Let me try what it will do, when I cultivate
it with devotion as a pursuit.”
The resolution, thus suddenly aroused within
me, heaved a load from off my heart. I felt
a confidence in it from the very place where it
was formed. It seemed as though my mother's
spirit whispered it to me from her grave. “I
will henceforth,” said I, “endeavour to be all
that she fondly imagined me. I will endeavour
to act as if she were witness of my actions. I
will endeavour to acquit myself in such manner,
that when I revisit her grave there may, at least,
be no compunctious bitterness in my tears.”
I bowed down and kissed the turf in solemn
attestation of my vow. I plucked some primroses
that were growing there and laid them next
my heart. I left the church yard with my spirits
once more lifted up, and set out a third time
for London, in the character of an author.
Here my companion made a pause, and I waited
in anxious suspense; hoping to have a whole
volume of literary life unfolded to me. He seemed,
however, to have sunk into a fit of pensive
musing; and when after some time I gently roused
him by a question or two as to his literary career.
“No,” said he smiling, “over that part of my
story I wish to leave a cloud. Let the mysteries
of the craft rest sacred for me. Let those who
have never adventured into the republic of letters,
still look upon it as a fairy land. Let them suppose
the author the very being they picture him
from his works: I am not the man to mar their
illusion. I am not the man to hint, while one is
admiring the silken web of Persia, that it has
been spun from the entrails of a miserable worm.”
“Well,” said I, “if you will tell me nothing
of your literary history, let me know at least if
you have had any farther intelligence from
Doubting Castle.”
“Willingly,” replied he, “though I have but
little to communicate.”
| GRAVE REFLECTIONS
OF
A DISAPPOINTED MAN. Tales of a traveller | |