Part 1 (2/2)

a doll given me onre, fro day, October 5th, and I do not think that randfather's--went to the house again until the day of the funeral With the death, my mother broke down, and when all was over they carried her senseless fro afterwards hohen she recovered her senses, she passionately insisted on being left alone, and locked herself into her roo herher to open the door, started back at the face she saith the cry: ”Good God, Elossy and abundant, which, contrasting with her large grey eyes, had rey in that night of agony, and to me my mother's face is ever framed in exquisite silver bands of hair as white as the driven unsullied snow

I have heard that the love between , and it most certainly stamped her character for life

He was keenly intellectual and splendidly educated; a hly uese, with a s of Hebrew and Gaelic, the treasures of ancient and ofpleased hi aloud to her while she worked; now translating fro forth melodiously the exquisite cadences of ”Queen Mab”

Student of philosophy as he was, he was deeply and steadily sceptical; and a very religious relative has told ht, playful mockery of the tenets of the Christian faith His mother and sister were strict Roman Catholics, and near the end forced a priest into his room, but the priest was pro man, and by the aler of the creed he detested should trouble her darling at the last

Deeply read in philosophy, he had outgrown the orthodox beliefs of his day, and his wife, who loved him too much to criticise, ont to reconcile her own piety and his scepticisious,” whileand think as they would, provided that they were upright and honourable in their lives But the result of his liberal and unorthodox thought was to insensibly modify and partially rationalise her own beliefs, and she put on one side as errors the doctrines of eternal punishment, the vicarious atonement, the infallibility of the Bible, the equality of the Son with the Father in the Trinity, and other orthodox beliefs, and rejoiced in her later years in the writings of such men as Jowett, Colenso, and Stanley The last naentleman, suave, polished, broad-minded, devout in a stately way The baldness of a typical Evangelical service outraged her taste as ed her intellect; she liked to feel herself a Christian in a dignified and artistic manner, and to be surrounded by solemn music and splendid architecture when she ”attended Divine service” Faes was detestable to her, and she did her duty of saluting them in a courtly and reverent fashi+on Westht and shadowy distances; there in a carven stall, with choristers chanting in solelories of the painted s repeating the pillars, with the rich harainst screen and hty dead around, and all the stately ht into the very ion appeared to her to be intellectually dignified and eion in strenuous fashi+on, this dainty and well-bred piety see vigour of conviction and practice often jarred on her as alien from the delicate balance and absence of extreentlewoime_; I of the stuff froht, in looking back, that she must have had on her lips many a time unspoken a phrase that dropped fro: ”My little one, you have never made me sad or sorry except for your own sake; you have always been too religious” And then sheAnnie's only fault; she has always been too religious” Methinks that, as the world judges, the dying voice spake truly, and the dying eyes saith a real insight For though I was then kneeling beside her bed, heretic and outcast, the heart of ion, and in its rebellious uprising against dogmas that crushed the reason and did not satisfy the soul I went out into the darkness alone, not because religion was too good for re, too co, too bound up with earthly interests, too calculating in its accommodations to social conventionalities The Roman Catholic Church, had it captured me, as it nearly did, would have sent er and sacrifice and utilised me as a martyr; the Church established by law transforonist

For as a child I was er-tips, and with a certain faculty for seeing visions and drea dreams This faculty is not uncommon with the Keltic races, and makes them seem ”superstitious” to more solidly-built peoples

Thus, on the day of my father's funeral, my mother sat with vacant eyes and fixed pallid face--the picture coination--following the funeral service, stage after stage, and suddenly, with the words, ”It is all over!”

fell back fainting She said afterwards that she had followed the hearse, had attended the service, had walked behind the coffin to the grave Certain it is that a feeeks later she detero to the Kensal Green Cemetery, where the body of her husband had been laid, and went thither with a relative; he failed to find the grave, and while another of the party went in search of an official to identify the spot, my mother said, ”If you will take me to the chapel where the first part of the service was read, I will find the grave”

The idea seemed to her friend, of course, to be absurd; but he would not cross the newly-made , so took her to the chapel She looked round, left the chapel door, and followed the path along which the corpse had been borne till she reached the grave, where she was quietly standing when the caretaker arrived to point it out The grave is at some distance from the chapel, and is not on one of theon it towith the number, and this would be no help to identification at a distance since all the graves are thus s are not visible How she found the grave rehtforward story that she had been present at the funeral With h, for I no that the consciousness can leave the body, take part in events going on at a distance, and, returning, impress on the physical brain what it has experienced The very fact that she asked to be taken to the chapel is significant, showing that she was picking up a rave; she could only find the grave if she started from _the place from which she had started before_ Another proof of this ultra-physical capacity was given a fewhiht in her ar to die” The child had no definite disease, but asting away, and it was argued to her that the returning spring would restore the health lost during the winter ”No,” was her answer ”He was lying asleep in ht, and William” (her husband) ”caht keep the other two” In vain she was assured that she had been drea, that it was quite natural that she should dreaiven the drea would persuade her that she had not seen her husband, or that the inforiven her was not true So it was noMarch her arms were empty, and a waxen form lay lifeless in the baby's cot

My brother and I were allowed to see him just before he was placed in his coffin; I can see him still, so white and beautiful, with a black spot in the middle of the fair, waxen forehead, and I remember the deadly cold which startled me when I was told to kiss my little brother It was the first time that I had touched Death That black spotwhat had caused it, I was told that at the moment after his death my ht, that the mother's kiss of farewell should have been n of corruption on the child's face!

I do not mention these stories because they are in any fashi+on remarkable or out of the way, but only to show that the sensitiveness to impressions other than physical ones, that was a marked feature in my own childhood, was present also in the faed

For the physical nature is inherited from parents, and sensitiveness to psychic impressions is a property of the physical body; in our fahosts” of all descriptions was general, and mywhen the death-hour of one of the family was near To me in my childhood, elves and fairies of all sorts were very real things, and my dolls were as really children as I wasentities, and the tragedy in which they bore part costahen I heard the squawk of the coht shut out the sound of the blows and the cry of the ill-used baby All the objects about me were to me alive, the flowers that I kissed as much as the kitten I petted, and I used to have a splendid ti out all sorts of lovely stories as But there was a more serious side to this dreaion

CHAPTER II

EARLY CHILDHOOD

And now began le and of anxiety Hitherto, since her e, she had known no ood incoht of anxiety clouded their future When he died, he believed that he left his wife and children safe, at least, fro of the details, but the outco was left for theand children, save a trifle of ready money The resolve to which my mother came was characteristic Two of her husband's relatives, Western and Sir Williaood city school, and to start hireat city influence to push hi lad's father and mother had talked of a different future for their eldest boy; he was to go to a public school, and then to the University, and was to enter one of the ”learned professions”--to take orders, the o to the Bar, the father hoped On his death-bed there was nothing ed by my father than that Harry should receive the best possible education, and the as resolute to fulfil that last wish In her eyes, a city school was not ”the best possible education,” and the Irish pride rebelled against the idea of her son not being ”a University's head about her ”foolish pride,” especially by the female members of the Wood family; and her persistence in her oay caused a considerable alienation between herself and the, re hand to her in her first difficult struggles After itation, she resolved that the boy should be educated at Harrohere the fees are co in the town, and that he should go thence to Cae or to Oxford, as his tastes should direct A bold scheme for a penniless , but carried out to the letter; for never dwelt in a delicate body a more resolute mind and will than that ofwhich we lived, poorly enough, in Richmond Terrace, Clapham, close to her father and s over a grocer's shop, and set herself to look for a house This grocer was a very poexceedingly, and one day my mother related with et on if she worked hard ”Look atvisibly with importance; ”I was once a poor boy, without a penny of my own, and now I ao to every evening” That ”submarine villa” was an object of a day

”There is Mr ----'s sub: and I, too, used to laughof the difference between suburban and subrocer

My lad to place hie of her own son, to educate with him; and by this means she was able to pay for a tutor, to prepare the two boys for school The tutor had a cork leg, which was a source of serious trouble to ht behind e knelt down to family prayers--conduct which struck , but which I always felt a desire to imitate After about a year ht would suit her schehan, the then head-ain han, who , little woman, from that time forth became her earnest friend and helper; and to the counsel and active assistance both of himself and of his wife, was due much of the success that crowned her toil Hethe permission she asked, and that was, that she should also have in her house one of the masters of the school, so that the boys should not suffer from the want of a house-tutor This condition, of course, she readily accepted, and the arrangement lasted for ten years, until after her son had left school for Cae

The house she took is now, I am sorry to say, pulled down, and replaced by a hideous red-brick structure It was very old and ra, rose-covered in front, ivy-covered behind; it stood on the top of Harrow Hill, between the church and the school, and had once been the vicarage of the parish, but the vicar had left it because it was so far ree where all his work lay The drawing-room opened by an old-fashi+oned half-, half-door--which proved a constant source of grief to me, for whenever I had on a new frock I always tore it on the bolt as I flew through--into a large garden which sloped down one side of the hill, and was filled with the htful old trees, fir and laurel, may, mulberry, hazel, apple, pear, and daooseberry bushes innu down the sunny slopes There was not a tree there that I did not clial laurel, was my private country house I had there -rooms, my study, and my larder The larder was supplied by the fruit-trees, from which I was free to pick as I would, and in the study I would sit for hours with some favourite book--Milton's ”Paradise Lost” the chief favourite of all The birdsfor on a branch, came out in childish tones the ”Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers,” of Milton's stately and sonorous verse I liked to personify Satan, and to declairand speeches of the hero-rebel, and many a happy hour did I pass in Milton's heaven and hell, with for companions Satan and ”the Son,”

Gabriel and Abdiel Then there was a terrace running by the side of the churchyard, always dry in the wettest weather, and bordered by an old wooden fence, over which claarden for roses as that of the Old Vicarage At the end of the terrace was a little su open and displayed one of the fairest views in England Sheer from your feet doards went the hill, and then far below stretched the wooded country till your eye reached the towers of Windsor Castle, far away on the horizon It was the viehich Byron was never tired of gazing, as he lay on the flat tombstone close by--Byron's toain I behold where for hours I have pondered, As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I lay, Or round the steep brow of the churchyard I wandered, To catch the last gleao to Harrow, ask perarden, and try the effect of that sudden burst of beauty, as you swing back the small trap-door at the terrace end

Into this house we hth birthday, and for eleven years it was ”horet, returned to alith joy

Almost immediately afterwards I lefta fa in the drawing-roo face, which softenedin; she called me to her presently, and tookday our friend cao away and be educated with this lady's niece, co my education in her hands At first my mother would not hear of it, for she and I scarcely ever left each other; my love for her was an idolatry, hers for me a devotion (A foolish little story, about which I was unmercifully teased for years, marked that absolute idolatry of her, which has not yet faded fro one day of the child who trotted after her everywhere, content to sit, or stand, or wait, if only she ht touch hand or dress of ”mamma,” she said: ”Little one” (the na toand tie you to ,” came the fervent answer, ”do let it be in a knot” And, indeed, the tie of love between us was so tightly knotted that nothing ever loosened it till the sword of Death cut that which pain and trouble never availed to slacken in the slightest degree) But it was urged upon her that the advantages of education offered were such as no e for ood a cricketer and clied to send ave es At last she yielded, and it was decided that Miss Marryat, on returning home, should take me with her

Miss Marryat--the favourite sister of Captain Marryat, the fae h the illness that ended in his death, and had been living with her mother at Wimbledon Park On her mother's death she looked round for hich wouldthat one of her brothers had a large fae of one of the to coood fortune threw ht she would like to teach two little girls rather than one Hence her offer to my mother