The Last Man
of my ability, with all the zeal and affection of which my nature was
capable. My sister was three years younger than myself; I had nursed
her as an infant, and when the difference of our sexes, by giving us
various occupations, in a great measure divided us, yet she continued
to be the object of my careful love. Orphans, in the fullest sense of
the term, we were poorest among the poor, and despised among the
unhonoured. If my daring and courage obtained for me a kind of
respectful aversion, her youth and sex, since they did not excite
tenderness, by proving her to be weak, were the causes of numberless
mortifications to her; and her own disposition was not so constituted
as to diminish the evil effects of her lowly station.
She was a singular being, and, like me, inherited much of the peculiar
disposition of our father. Her countenance was all expression; her eyes
were not dark, but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space
after space in their intellectual glance, and to feel that the soul
which was their soul, comprehended an universe of thought in its ken.
She was pale and fair, and her golden hair clustered on her temples,
contrasting its rich hue with the living marble beneath. Her coarse
peasant-dress, little consonant apparently with the refinement of
feeling which her face expressed, yet in a strange manner accorded with
it. She was like one of Guido’s saints, with heaven in her heart and in
her look, so that when you saw her you only thought of that within, and
costume and even feature were secondary to the mind that beamed in her
countenance.
Yet though lovely and full of noble feeling, my poor Perdita (for this
was the fanciful name my sister had received from her dying parent),
was not altogether saintly in her disposition. Her manners were cold
and repulsive. If she had been nurtured by those who had regarded her
with affection, she might have been different; but unloved and
neglected, she repaid want of kindness with distrust and silence. She
was submissive to those who held authority over her, but a perpetual
cloud dwelt on her brow; she looked as if she expected enmity from
every one who approached her, and her actions were instigated by the
same feeling. All the time she could command she spent in solitude. She
would ramble to the most unfrequented places, and scale dangerous
heights, that in those unvisited spots she might wrap herself in
loneliness. Often she passed whole hours walking up and down the paths
of the woods; she wove garlands of flowers and ivy, or watched the
flickering of the shadows and glancing of the leaves; sometimes she sat
beside a stream, and as her thoughts paused, threw flowers or pebbles
into the waters, watching how those swam and these sank; or she would
set afloat boats formed of bark of trees or leaves, with a feather for
a sail, and intensely watch the navigation of her craft among the
rapids and shallows of the brook. Meanwhile her active fancy wove a
thousand combinations; she dreamt “of moving accidents by flood and
field”—she lost herself delightedly in these self-created wanderings,
and returned with unwilling spirit to the dull detail of common life.
Poverty was the cloud that veiled her excellencies, and all that was
good in her seemed about to perish from want of the genial dew of
affection. She had not even the same advantage as I in the recollection
of her parents; she clung to me, her brother, as her only friend, but
her alliance with me completed the distaste that her protectors felt
for her; and every error was magnified by them into crimes. If she had
been bred in that sphere of life to which by inheritance the delicate
framework of her mind and person was adapted, she would have been the
object almost of adoration, for her virtues were as eminent as her
defects. All the genius that ennobled the blood of her father
illustrated hers; a generous tide flowed in her veins; artifice, envy,
or meanness, were at the antipodes of her nature; her countenance, when
enlightened by amiable feeling, might have belonged to a queen of
nations; her eyes were bright; her look fearless.
Although by our situation and dispositions we were almost equally cut
off from the usual forms of social intercourse, we formed a strong
contrast to each other. I always required the stimulants of
companionship and applause. Perdita was all-sufficient to herself.
Notwithstanding my lawless habits, my disposition was sociable, hers
recluse. My life was spent among tangible realities, hers was a dream.
I might be said even to love my enemies, since by exciting me they in a
sort bestowed happiness upon me; Perdita almost disliked her friends,
for they interfered with her visionary moods. All my feelings, even of
exultation and triumph, were changed to bitterness, if unparticipated;
Perdita, even in joy, fled to loneliness, and could go on from day to
day, neither expressing her emotions, nor seeking a fellow-feeling in
another mind. Nay, she could love and dwell with tenderness on the look
and voice of her friend, while her demeanour expressed the coldest
reserve. A sensation with her became a sentiment, and she never spoke
until she had mingled her perceptions of outward objects with others
which were the native growth of her own mind. She was like a fruitful
soil that imbibed the airs and dews of heaven, and gave them forth
again to light in loveliest forms of fruits and flowers; but then she
was often dark and rugged as that soil, raked up, and new sown with
unseen seed.
She dwelt in a cottage whose trim grass-plat sloped down to the waters
of the lake of Ulswater; a beech wood stretched up the hill behind, and
a purling brook gently falling from the acclivity ran through
poplar-shaded banks into the lake. I lived with a farmer whose house
was built higher up among the hills: a dark crag rose behind it, and,
exposed to the north, the snow lay in its crevices the summer through.
Before dawn I led my flock to the sheep-walks, and guarded them through
the day. It was a life of toil; for rain and cold were more frequent
than sunshine; but it was my pride to contemn the elements. My trusty
dog watched the sheep as I slipped away to the rendezvous of my
comrades, and thence to the accomplishment of our schemes. At noon we
met again, and we threw away in contempt our peasant fare, as we built
our fire-place and kindled the cheering blaze destined to cook the game
stolen from the neighbouring preserves. Then came the tale of
hair-breadth escapes, combats with dogs, ambush and flight, as
gipsey-like we encompassed our pot. The search after a stray lamb, or
the devices by which we elude or endeavoured to elude punishment,
filled up the hours of afternoon; in the evening my flock went to its
fold, and I to my sister.
It was seldom indeed that we escaped, to use an old-fashioned phrase,
scot free. Our dainty fare was often exchanged for blows and
imprisonment. Once, when thirteen years of age, I was sent for a month
to the county jail. I came out, my morals unimproved, my hatred to my
oppressors encreased tenfold. Bread and water did not tame my blood,
nor solitary confinement inspire me with gentle thoughts. I was angry,
impatient, miserable; my only happy hours were those during which I
devised schemes of revenge; these were perfected in my forced solitude,
so that during the whole of the following season, and I was freed early
in September, I never failed to provide excellent and plenteous fare
for myself and my comrades. This was a glorious winter. The sharp frost
and heavy snows tamed the animals, and kept the country gentlemen by
their firesides; we got more game than we could eat, and my faithful
dog grew sleek upon our refuse.
Thus years passed on; and years only added fresh love of freedom, and
contempt for all that was not as wild and rude as myself. At the age of
sixteen I had shot up in appearance to man’s estate; I was tall and
athletic; I was practised to feats of strength, and inured to the
inclemency of the elements. My skin was embrowned by the sun; my step
was firm with conscious power. I feared no man, and loved none. In
after life I looked back with wonder to what I then was; how utterly
worthless I should have become if I had pursued my lawless career. My
life was like that of an animal, and my mind was in danger of
degenerating into that which informs brute nature. Until now, my savage
habits had done me no radical mischief; my physical powers had grown up
and flourished under their influence, and my mind, undergoing the same
discipline, was imbued with all the hardy virtues. But now my boasted
independence was daily instigating me to acts of tyranny, and freedom
was becoming licentiousness. I stood on the brink of manhood; passions,
strong as the trees of a forest, had already taken root within me, and
were about to shadow with their noxious overgrowth, my path of life.
I panted for enterprises beyond my childish exploits, and formed
distempered dreams of future action. I avoided my ancient comrades, and
I soon lost them. They arrived at the age when they were sent to fulfil
their destined situations in life; while I, an outcast, with none to
lead or drive me forward, paused. The old began to point at me as an
example, the young to wonder at me as a being distinct from themselves;
I hated them, and began, last and worst degradation, to hate myself. I
clung to my ferocious habits, yet half despised them; I continued my
war against civilization, and yet entertained a wish to belong to it.
I revolved again and again all that I remembered my mother to have told
me of my father’s former life; I contemplated the few relics I
possessed belonging to him, which spoke of greater refinement than
could be found among the mountain cottages; but nothing in all this
served as a guide to lead me to another and pleasanter way of life. My
father had been connected with nobles, but all I knew of such
connection was subsequent neglect. The name of the king,—he to whom my
dying father had addressed his latest prayers, and who had barbarously
slighted them, was associated only with the ideas of unkindness,
injustice, and consequent resentment. I was born for something greater
than I was—and greater I would become; but greatness, at least to my
distorted perceptions, was no necessary associate of goodness, and my
wild thoughts were unchecked by moral considerations when they rioted
in dreams of distinction. Thus I stood upon a pinnacle, a sea of evil
rolled at my feet; I was about to precipitate myself into it, and rush
like a torrent over all obstructions to the object of my wishes— when a
stranger influence came over the current of my fortunes, and changed
their boisterous course to what was in comparison like the gentle
meanderings of a meadow-encircling streamlet.
CHAPTER II.
I lived far from the busy haunts of men, and the rumour of wars or
political changes came worn to a mere sound, to our mountain abodes.
England had been the scene of momentous struggles, during my early
boyhood. In the year 2073, the last of its kings, the ancient friend of
my father, had abdicated in compliance with the gentle force of the
remonstrances of his subjects, and a republic was instituted. Large
estates were secured to the dethroned monarch and his family; he
received the title of Earl of Windsor, and Windsor Castle, an ancient
royalty, with its wide demesnes were a part of his allotted wealth. He
died soon after, leaving two children, a son and a daughter.
The ex-queen, a princess of the house of Austria, had long impelled her
husband to withstand the necessity of the times. She was haughty and
fearless; she cherished a love of power, and a bitter contempt for him
who had despoiled himself of a kingdom. For her children’s sake alone