George Silvermans Explanation | Page 6

of frowns, - sordid, afraid,
unadmiring, - a small brute to shudder at.
To that time I had never had the faintest impression of duty. I had had no knowledge
whatever that there was anything lovely in this life. When I had occasionally slunk up the
cellar-steps into the street, and glared in at shop-windows, I had done so with no higher
feelings than we may suppose to animate a mangy young dog or wolf-cub. It is equally
the fact that I had never been alone, in the sense of holding unselfish converse with
myself. I had been solitary often enough, but nothing better.
Such was my condition when I sat down to my dinner that day, in the kitchen of the old
farm-house. Such was my condition when I lay on my bed in the old farm-house that
night, stretched out opposite the narrow mullioned window, in the cold light of the moon,
like a young vampire.

FIFTH CHAPTER

WHAT do I know of Hoghton Towers? Very little; for I have been gratefully unwilling to
disturb my first impressions. A house, centuries old, on high ground a mile or so removed
from the road between Preston and Blackburn, where the first James of England, in his
hurry to make money by making baronets, perhaps made some of those remunerative
dignitaries. A house, centuries old, deserted and falling to pieces, its woods and gardens
long since grass-land or ploughed up, the Rivers Ribble and Darwen glancing below it,
and a vague haze of smoke, against which not even the supernatural prescience of the
first Stuart could foresee a counter-blast, hinting at steam-power, powerful in two
distances.
What did I know then of Hoghton Towers? When I first peeped in at the gate of the
lifeless quadrangle, and started from the mouldering statue becoming visible to me like
its guardian ghost; when I stole round by the back of the farm-house, and got in among
the ancient rooms, many of them with their floors and ceilings falling, the beams and
rafters hanging dangerously down, the plaster dropping as I trod, the oaken panels
stripped away, the windows half walled up, half broken; when I discovered a gallery
commanding the old kitchen, and looked down between balustrades upon a massive old
table and benches, fearing to see I know not what dead-alive creatures come in and seat
themselves, and look up with I know not what dreadful eyes, or lack of eyes, at me; when
all over the house I was awed by gaps and chinks where the sky stared sorrowfully at me,
where the birds passed, and the ivy rustled, and the stains of winter weather blotched the
rotten floors; when down at the bottom of dark pits of staircase, into which the stairs had
sunk, green leaves trembled, butterflies fluttered, and bees hummed in and out through
the broken door-ways; when encircling the whole ruin were sweet scents, and sights of

fresh green growth, and ever-renewing life, that I had never dreamed of, - I say, when I
passed into such clouded perception of these things as my dark soul could compass, what
did I know then of Hoghton Towers?
I have written that the sky stared sorrowfully at me. Therein have I anticipated the answer.
I knew that all these things looked sorrowfully at me; that they seemed to sigh or whisper,
not without pity for me, 'Alas! poor worldly little devil!'
There were two or three rats at the bottom of one of the smaller pits of broken staircase
when I craned over and looked in. They were scuffling for some prey that was there; and,
when they started and hid themselves close together in the dark, I thought of the old life
(it had grown old already) in the cellar.
How not to be this worldly little devil? how not to have a repugnance towards myself as I
had towards the rats? I hid in a corner of one of the smaller chambers, frightened at
myself, and crying (it was the first time I had ever cried for any cause not purely
physical), and I tried to think about it. One of the farm- ploughs came into my range of
view just then; and it seemed to help me as it went on with its two horses up and down
the field so peacefully and quietly.
There was a girl of about my own age in the farm-house family, and she sat opposite to
me at the narrow table at meal-times. It had come into my mind, at our first dinner, that
she might take the fever from me. The thought had not disquieted me then. I had only
speculated how she would look under the altered circumstances, and whether she would
die. But it came