"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 trickled more slowly down my cheeks, and 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 carolling 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, "endeavor to be all that she
fondly imagined me. I will endeavor to act as if she were witness of my
actions. I will endeavor 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."
THE BOOBY SQUIRE.
A long time elapsed, said Buckthorne, without my receiving any accounts
of my cousin and his estate. Indeed, I felt so much soreness on the
subject, that I wished, if possible, to shut it from my thoughts. At
length chance took me into that part of the country, and I could not
refrain from making some inquiries.
I learnt that my cousin had grown up ignorant, self-willed, and
clownish. His ignorance and clownishness had prevented his mingling
with the neighboring gentry. In spite of his great fortune he had been
unsuccessful in an attempt to gain the hand of the daughter of the
parson, and had at length shrunk into the limits of such society as a
mere man of wealth can gather in a country neighborhood.
He kept horses and hounds and a roaring table, at which were collected
the loose livers of the country round, and the shabby gentlemen of a
village in the vicinity. When he could get no other company he would
smoke and drink with his own servants, who in their turns fleeced and
despised him. Still, with all this apparent prodigality, he had a
leaven of the old man in him, which showed that he was his true-born
son. He lived far within his income, was vulgar in his expenses, and
penurious on many points on which a gentleman would be extravagant. His
house servants were obliged occasionally to work on the estate, and
part of the pleasure grounds were ploughed up and devoted to husbandry.
