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The Story of My Life, volumes 4-6. Augustus J. C. Hare
Читать онлайн.Название The Story of My Life, volumes 4-6
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isbn 4057664593016
Автор произведения Augustus J. C. Hare
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
“Being a sensible girl, when she went abroad, she threw herself at once into the interests of the country she was in. She dried plants, she made sketches, she went up mountains, and, as autumn came on, she was the person who urged that they should return to Croglin Grange. ‘We have taken it,’ she said, ‘for seven years, and we have only been there one; and we shall always find it difficult to let a house which is only one story high, so we had better return there; lunatics do not escape every day.’ As she urged it, her brothers wished nothing better, and the family returned to Cumberland. From there being no upstairs in the house, it was impossible to make any great change in their arrangements. The sister occupied the same room, but it is unnecessary to say she always closed her shutters, which, however, as in many old houses, always left one top pane of the window uncovered. The brothers moved, and occupied a room together exactly opposite that of their sister, and they always kept loaded pistols in their room.
“The winter passed most peacefully and happily. In the following March the sister was suddenly awakened by a sound she remembered only too well—scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window, and looking up, she saw, climbed up to the topmost pane of the window, the same hideous brown shrivelled face, with glaring eyes, looking in at her. This time she screamed as loud as she could. Her brothers rushed out of their room with pistols, and out of the front door. The creature was already scudding away across the lawn. One of the brothers fired and hit it in the leg, but still with the other leg it continued to make way, scrambled over the wall into the churchyard, and seemed to disappear into a vault which belonged to a family long extinct.
“The next day the brothers summoned all the tenants of Croglin Grange, and in their presence the vault was opened. A horrible scene revealed itself. The vault was full of coffins; they had been broken open, and their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, were scattered over the floor. One coffin alone remained intact. Of that the lid had been lifted, but still lay loose upon the coffin. They raised it, and there, brown, withered, shrivelled, mummified, but quite entire, was the same hideous figure which had looked in at the windows of Croglin Grange, with the marks of a recent pistol-shot in the leg; and they did—the only thing that can lay a vampire—they burnt it.”
Journal.
“Highcliffe, June 30, 1874.—It is delightful to be here again. I came on Friday with Everard Primrose,[99] a friend who always especially interests me, in spite of the intense melancholy which always makes him say that he longs for an early death.
“This place, so spiritually near the gates of heaven, is a great rest—quite a halt in life—after London, which, though I thought it filled with all great and beautiful things, packs in too much, so that one loses breath mentally. Here all is still, and the touching past and earnestly hopeful future lend a wonderful charm to the quiet life of the present. ‘Les beaux jours sont là; on ne les voit pas, on les sent.’[100]
“The dear lady of the castle is not looking well. I believe it is owing to her conversion to Lady Jane Ellice’s teetotalism; but she says it is not that. Lady Jane herself is a perpetual sunshine, which radiates on all around her and is quite enchanting. Miss Lindsay is the only other guest. In the evening Lady Jane sings and Miss Lindsay recites—most wonderfully—out of Shakspeare, with great power and pathos.
“It has not been fine weather, but we have had delightful walks on the sand, by the still sad-looking sea, with the Isle of Wight and its Needles rising in the faint distance, or in the thick woods of wind-blown ilex and arbutus. One day we went to ‘the Haven House,’ which is a place that often comes back to my recollection—picturesquely, gauntly standing on a tongue of land at the meeting of river and bay, at the end of a weird pine-wood, where the gnarled roots of the trees all writhe seawards out of the sand. Here groups of children were at play on the little jetties of sea-weedy stones and timber, while a row of herons were catching fish—solitarily—at great intervals, in the bay.
“Lady Mary Lambart came last night—a simple, self-composed girl, with a pale face and golden hair. She lives exclusively with her aunt, Lady Alicia Blackwood.
“Yesterday, in the ‘Lady Chapel’ of the great church at Christ-Church, I suddenly came upon the tomb of Mary Morgan, who died in 1796. She was companion to my great-aunt, the unhappy Countess of Strathmore, and this monument was dedicated ‘to the most rare of all connections, a perfect and disinterested friend, by the Countess of Strathmore, who, conscious of the treasure, valued its possession and mourned its loss. … To her heroic qualities, her cool deliberate courage, and her matchless persevering friendship, the tears of blood shed by one who despises weakness, the records of law and justice, and perhaps even the historic page, will bear witness to an astonished and admiring posterity.’
“On the whole, Christ-Church is dull inside: it is so vast, and chiefly perpendicular. The old tombs are used as pedestals for modern monuments, and the old gravestones, stripped of their brasses, have modern epitaphs inserted between the ancient gothic inscriptions. Outside, the position is beautiful, on a little height above the river, near which are some old ruins, and which winds away to the sea through flat reedy meadow-lands, still marked by sails of boats where its outline is lost in distance.”
“June 30.—Mrs. Hamilton Hamilton came last night. She was a daughter of Sir G. Robinson. Her father’s aide-de-camp, Captain Campbell, a poor man, wanted to marry her, and she was attached to him; but it was not allowed, and they were separated. She was married to Mr. Hamilton Hamilton, but Captain Campbell never ceased to think of her, and he was ambitious for her sake, and became Sir Colin Campbell and Lord Clyde. Afterwards, when she was free, it was thought he would marry her. He sent her an Indian shawl, and he wrote to her, and he came to see her, but he never proposed; and she waited and expected, and at last she heard he had said, ‘No, it could not be; people would say it was absurd.’ But it would not have been absurd at all, and she would have liked it very much.
“One always feels here as if one did not half appreciate the perfection of each day as it goes by. It needs time to recognise and realise the warmth and colour which a noble mind, a true heart, and an ever heaven-aspiring soul can throw into even the commonest things of life. I often wonder how these walks, how these rooms with their old boisserie would appear with another inhabitant; quite unimpressive perhaps—but now they are simply illuminated. Beautiful pictures remain with one from everything at Highcliffe, but most of all that of the noble figure, seated in her high tapestried chair, painting at her little table by the light of the green lamp, and behind her a great vase filled with colossal branches of green chestnut, mingled with tall white lilies, such as Gabriel bore before the Virgin. As Lady Jane sings, she is roused to call for more songs, for ‘something pathetic, full of passion—love cannot be passionate enough.’—‘What! another?’ says Lady Jane. ‘Another, two nothers, three nothers: I cannot have enough.’
“ ‘In the perfect Christian, the principal virtues which