University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

Years passed away, and with their flight the two fair children
were matured into two sweet and lovely women; yet the
same fleeting suns, which brought to them complete and perfect
youth, were fraught to others with decay, and all the carking
cares and querulous ailments of old age. The mother who
had watched, with keen solicitude, over their budding infancy,
over the promise of their lovely childhood, lived indeed; but
lived not to see or understand the full accomplishment of that
bright promise. Even before the elder girl had reached the
dawn of womanhood, palsy had shaken the enfeebled limbs,
and its accustomed follower — mental debility — had in no small
degree impaired the intellect of her surviving parent; but long
before her sister had reached her maturity, the limbs were
helplessly immovable, the mind was wholly clouded and estranged.

It was not now the wandering and uncertain darkness, that
flits across the veiled horizon of the mind alternately with vivid
gleams, flashes of memory, and intellect, brighter, perhaps, than
ever visited the spirit, until its partial aberration had jarred its
vital principles. It was that deep and utter torpor, blanker
than sleep; and duller — for no dreams seem to mingle with its
day-long lethargy — that absolute paralysis of all the faculties
of soul and body, which is so beautifully painted by the great
Roman satirist, as the

that still, sad, patient, silent suffering, which sits from day to
day in the one usual chair, unconscious of itself, and almost so
of all around it; easily pleased by trifles, which it forgets as
soon; deriving its sole, real, and tangible enjoyment from the
doze in the summer sunshine, or by the sparkling hearth of
winter. Such was the mother now — so utterly, so hopelessly
dependent on those bright beings, whose infancy she had nursed
so devotedly — and well was that devotedness now compensated;
for day and night, winter and summer, did those sweet
girls by turns watch over the frail querulous sexagenarian —
never both leaving her at once, one sleeping while the other
watched, attentive ever to her ceaseless cravings, patient and
mild to meet her angry and uncalled-for lamentations.

You would have thought a seclusion so entire, from all society
of their equals, must have prevented their acquiring those
usual accomplishments, those necessary arts, which every English
gentlewoman is presumed to possess, as things of course
— that they must have grown up mere ignorant, unpolished
country lasses, without taste or aspiration beyond the small
routine of their dull, daily duties — that long confinement must
have broken the higher and more spiritual parts of their fine
natural minds — that they must have become mere moping
household drudges; and so to think would be so very natural,
that it is by no means easy to conceive how it was brought to
pass, that the very opposite of this should have been the result.
The very opposite it was, however — for as there were
not in the whole West Riding two girls more beautiful than
Annabel and Marian Hawkwood, so were there surely none so
highly educated, so happy in themselves, so eminently calculated
to render others happy.

Accomplished as musicians, both, though Annabel especially,
excelled in instrumental music, while her young sister was unrivalled
in voice and execution as a songstress; both skilled in

painting; and if not poetesses, insomuch as to be stringers of
words and rhymes, certainly such, and that, too, of no mean
order, in the wider and far higher acceptation of the word.
For their whole souls were attuned to the very highest key of
sensibility; romantic, not in the weak and ordinary meaning of
the term, but as admirers of all things high, and pure, and noble;
worshippers of the beautiful, whether it were embodied
in the scenery of their native glens, in the rock, the stream,
the forest, the sunshine that clothed all of them in a rich garb
of glory, or the dread storm that veiled them all in gloom and
terror — or in the masterpieces of the schools of painting, and
of sculpture — or in the pages of the great, the glorious of all
ages — or in the deeds of men, perils encountered hardily,
sufferings constantly endured, sorrows assuaged by charitable
generosity. Such were they in the strain and tenor of their
minds; gentle, moreover, as the gentlest of created things;
humble to their inferiors, but with a proud, and self-respecting,
and considerate humility; open, and free, and frank, toward
their equals, but proud, although not wanting in loyalty and
proper reverence for the great, and almost haughty of demeanor
to their superiors, when they encountered any such, which
was, indeed, of rare and singular occurrence.

It was a strange thing, indeed, that these lone girls should
have possessed such characters; so strongly marked, so powerful,
and striking — should have acquired accomplishments so
many, and so various in their nature. It will appear, perhaps,
even stranger to merely superficial thinkers, that the formation
of these powerful characters had been for the most part brought
about by the very circumstances which would at first have appeared
most unpropitious — their solitary habits, namely, and
their seclusion — almost absolute seclusion — from the gay
world of fashion and of folly! The large and opulent county
in which their patrimony lay, was indeed then, as now, studded

with the estates, the manors, and the parks of the richest and
the noblest of England's aristocracy. Yet the deep glens and
lofty moorlands, among which Ingleborough hall was situated,
are even to this day a lonely and sequestered region; no great
post-road winds through their devious passes, and although in
the close vicinity of large and populous towns, they are, even
in the nineteenth century, but little visited, and are occupied
by a population singularly primitive and pastoral in all its
thoughts and feelings. Much more then — in those days when
carriages were seen but rarely beyond the streets of the metropolis,
when roads were wild and rugged, and intercourse between
the nearest places, unless of more than ordinary magnitude,
difficult and uncertain — was that wild district to be deemed
secluded. So much so, indeed, was this the case, that at the
time of which I write, there were not within the circle of
some twenty miles, two families of equal rank, or filling the
same station of society with the Hawkwoods. This, had the
family been in such circumstances of domestic health and happiness
as would have permitted the girls to mingle in the gayeties
of the neighborhood, would have been a severe and serious
misfortune; as they must, from the continual intercourse with
their inferiors, have contracted, in a greater or less degree, a
grossness of both mind and manner; and would, most probably,
have fallen into that most destructive habit — destructive to the
mind I mean, and to all chance of progress or advancement — the
love of queening it in low society. It was, therefore, under
their circumstances, including the loss of one parent, and the
entire bereavement of the other, fortunate in no small degree
that they were compelled to seek their pleasures and their occupations,
no less than their duties, within the sphere of the
domestic circle.

The mother who was now so feeble and so helpless, though
never a person of much intellectual energy, or indeed of much

force of any kind, was yet in the highest sense of the word, a
lady. She had seen something of the great world apart from
the rural glens which witnessed her decline; had mingled with
the gay and noble even at the court of England; and being
possessed of more than ordinary beauty, had been a favorite,
and in some degree a belle. From her, then, had her daughters
naturally and unconsciously imbibed that easy, graceful
finish, which, more than all beside, is the true stamp of gentle
birth and bearing. Long before children can be brought to
comprehend general principles or rules of convention, they can
and do acquire habits, by that strange tact of observance, which
certainly commences at a stage so early of their young frail
existence, that we can not by any effort mark its first dawning
— habits, which thus acquired can hardly be effaced at all —
which will endure unaltered, and invariable, when tastes and
practices, and modes of thought and action, contracted long,
long afterward, have faded quite away and been forgotten.
Thus was it then, with these young creatures, while they
were yet mere girls, with all the pure right impulses of childhood
bursting out fresh and fair, they had been trained up in
the midst of high, and honorable, and correct associations.
Naught low, or mean, or little, naught selfish, or dishonest, or
corrupt, had ever so much as come near to them; in the sight
of virtue, and in the practice of politeness, they had shot up
into maturity; and their maturity, of consequence, was virtuous
and polished.

In after-years devoted as they were to that sick mother, they
had no chance of unlearning anything, and thus from day to
day they went on gaining fresh graces, as it were, by deduction
from the foregone teaching, and from the fact that purity and
nature when united must be graceful — until the proudest courts
of Europe could have shown nothing, even in their most difficult
circles, that could surpass, even if it could vie with, the

easy, artless frankness, the soft and finished courtesy, the unabashed,
yet modest grace, of those two mountain maidens.

At the period when my sad tale commences — for it is no
less sad than true — the sisters had just reached the young yet
perfect bloom of mature womanhood — the elder, Annabel, having
attained her twentieth summer, her sister Marian, being
exactly one year younger; and certainly two sweeter or more
lovely girls could not be pictured or imagined — not even in the
brightest moments of the painter's or poet's inspiration. They
were both tall and beautifully formed — both had sweet low-toned
voices — that excellent thing in woman! but here all
personal resemblance ended; for Annabel, the elder, had a
complexion pure and transparent as the snow of the untrodden
glacier before the sun has kissed it into roseate blushes, and
quite as colorless — her features were of the finest classic outline.
The smooth fair brow, the perfect Grecian nose, the
short curve of the upper lip, the exquisite arch of the small
mouth, the chiselled lines of the soft rounded chin, might have
served for a model to a sculptor, whereby to mould a mountain
nymph or Naiad. Her rich luxuriant hair was of a light and
sunny brown; her eyes of a clear and lustrous blue with a soft
languid and half-melancholy tenderness, for their more usual
expression, which suited well with the calm placid air that
was almost habitual to her beautiful features. To this no contrast
more complete could have been offered, than by the widely
different style of Marian's loveliness. Though younger than
her sister, her figure was more full and rounded — so much so,
that it reached the very point where symmetry is combined with
voluptuousness; yet was there nothing in the least degree voluptuous
in the expression of her bright artless face. Her forehead,
higher than Annabel's and broader, was as smooth and
as white as polished marble; her brows were well defined and
black as ebony; as were the long, long lashes that fringed her

laughing eyes — eyes of the brightest, lightest azure, that ever
glanced with merriment or melted into love — her nose was
small and delicate, but turned a little upward, so as to add,
however, rather than detract from the tout ensemble of her arch,
roguish beauty; her mouth was not very small, but exquisitely
formed, with lips redder than anything in nature, to which lips
can be well compared; and filled with teeth, regular, white,
and beautifully even. Fair as her sister's, and like hers, showing
everywhere the tiny veins of azure meandering below the
milky skin, Marian's complexion was yet as bright as morning,
with faint rosy tints, and red warm blushes, succeeding one
another, or vanishing away, and leaving the cheek pearly white
as one emotion followed and effaced another in her pure innocent
mind.

Her hair, profuse in its luxuriant flow, was of a deep, dark
brown, that might almost have been called black — but for a
thousand glancing golden lights, and warm, rich shadows, that
varied its smooth surface with the varying sunshine — and
was worn in a thick, massive plait, low down in the neck behind,
while on either side the brow it was trained off and taught
to cluster in front of each tiny ear, in an abundant maze of interwoven
curls, close and mysteriously enlaced, as are the tendrils
of the wild vine, which fluttering on each warm and
blnshing cheek, fell down the swan-like neck in heavy natural
ringlets.

But to describe the features is to give no idea, in the least,
of Marian's real beauty. There was a radiant, dazzling lustre,
that leaped out of her every feature, lightening from her quick
speaking eyes, and playing in the dimples of her bewitching
smile, so intoxicating to the beholder, that he would dwell upon
her face entranced, and know that it was lovely, and feel that
it was far more lovely, far more enthralling, than any he had
ever looked upon before. Yet, when without the sphere of

that enchantment, he would be all unable to say wherein consisted
its unmatched attraction.

Between the natural disposition and temperaments of the two
sisters, there was, perhaps, even a wider difference than between
the characteristics of their personal beauty, for Annabel
was calm and mild, and singularly placid; not in her manners
only, but in the whole tenor of her thoughts, and words, and
actions — there was a sort of gentle melancholy, that was not
altogether melancholy either, pervading her every tone of voice,
her every change of feature. She was not exactly grave, or
pensive, or subdued; for she could smile very joyously at times,
could act upon emergencies with readiness, and quickness, and
decision; and was at all times prompt in the expression of her
confirmed sentiments. But there was a very remarkable tranquillity
in her mode of doing everything she did; betokening
fully the presence of a decided principle, directing her at every
step, so that she was rarely agitated, even by accidents of the
most sudden and alarming character, and never actuated by any
rapid impulse.

The very opposite of this was Marian Hawkwood; for although
quite as upright and pure-minded as her sister — and
what is more, of a temper quite as amiable and sweet, yet was
her mood as changeful as an April day; although it was more
used to mirth and joyous laughter than to frowns or tears either,
yet had she tears as ready at any tale of sorrow, as are the
fountains of the spring-shower in the cloud, and eloquent frowns
and eyes that lightened their quick indignation at any outrage,
or oppression, or high-handed deed. Her cheek would crimson
with the tell-tale blood, her flesh would seem to thrill upon her
bones, her voice would choke, and her eyes swim with sympathetic
drops, whenever she read, or spoke, or heard of any noble
deed, whether of gallant daring, or of heroic self-denial.
Her tongue was prompt always as the sword of the knight-errant

to shelter the defenceless, to shield the innocent, to right the
wronged, and sometimes to avenge the absent. Artless herself,
and innocent in every thought and feeling, she set no guard
on either but as she felt and thought, so she spoke out and
acted, fearless, even as she was unconscious of any wrong;
defying misconstruction, and half inclined to doubt the possibility
of evil in the minds of others; so foreign did it seem, and
so impossible to her own natural, and, as it were, instinctive
sense of right.

Yet although such, in all respects, as I have striven to depict
them, the one all quick and flashing impulse, the other all
reflective and considerate principle, it was most wonderful how
seldom there was any clashing of opinion, or diversity of judgment,
as to what was to be done, what left undone, between the
lovely sisters. Marian would it is true, often jump at once to
conclusions, and act rapidly upon them too, at which the more
reflective Annabel would arrive only after some consideration;
but it did not occur more often that the one had reason to repent
of her precipitation, than the other of her over-caution.
Neither, indeed, had much cause for remorse of this kind at
all; for all the impulses of the one, all the thoughts and principles
of the other, were alike pure and kindly. With words,
however, it was not quite the same; for it must be admitted,
that Marian oftentimes said things, how unfrequently soever she
did aught, which she would willingly have recalled afterward.
Not, indeed, that she ever said anything unkind, or wrong in
itself, and rarely anything that could give pain to another, unless
that pain were richly merited indeed; but that she gradually
came to learn — long before she learned to restrain her
impulses — that it may be very often unwise to speak, what in
itself is wise — and very often, if not wrong, yet certainly
imprudent, and of evil consequence, to give loud utterance even
to right opinions.