Another farewell to poor Mary Quince, quite bewildered at the suddenness of
her bereavement. A serious and tremulous bow from our little old butler on
the steps. Madame bawling through the open window to the driver to make
good speed, and remember that we had but nineteen minutes to reach the
station. Away we went. Old Crowle's iron _grille_ rolled back before us.
I looked on the receding landscape, the giant trees--the palatial,
time-stained mansion. A strange conflict of feelings, sweet and bitter,
rose and mingled in the reverie. Had I been too hard and suspicious with
the inhabitants of that old house of my family? Was my uncle _justly_
indignant? Was I ever again to know such pleasant rambles as some of those
I had enjoyed with dear Millicent through the wild and beautiful woodlands
I was leaving behind me? And there, with my latest glimpse of the front
of Bartram-Haugh, I beheld dear old Mary Quince gazing after us. Again
my tears flowed. I waved my handkerchief from the window; and now the
park-wall hid all from view, and at a great pace, through the steep wooded
glen, with the rocky and precipitous character of a ravine, we glided; and
when the road next emerged, Bartram-Haugh was a misty mass of forest and
chimneys, slope and hollow, and we within a few minutes of the station.
CHAPTER LX
_THE JOURNEY_
Waiting for the train, as we stood upon the platform, I looked back again
toward the wooded uplands of Bartram; and far behind, the fine range of
mountains, azure and soft in the distance, beyond which lay beloved old
Knowl, and my lost father and mother, and the scenes of my childhood, never
embittered except by the sibyl who sat beside me.
Under happier circumstances I should have been, at my then early age, quite
wild with pleasurable excitement on entering London for the first time.
But black Care sat by me, with her pale hand in mine: a voice of fear and
warning, whose words I could not catch, was always in my ear. We drove
through London, amid the glare of lamps, toward the West-end, and for a
little while the sense of novelty and curiosity overcame my despondency,
and I peeped eagerly from the window; while Madame, who was in high
good-humour, spite of the fatigues of our long railway flight, screeched
scraps of topographic information in my ear; for London was a picture-book
in which she was well read.
'That is Euston Square, my dear--Russell Square. Here is Oxford
Street--Haymarket. See, there is the Opera House--Hair Majesty's Theatre.
See all the carriages waiting;' and so on, till we reached at length a
little narrow street, which she told me was off Piccadilly, where we drew
up before a private house, as it seemed to me--a family hotel--and I was
glad to be at rest for the night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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