George Silvermans Explanation | Page 7

into my mind now, that I might try to prevent her taking the fever by
keeping away from her. I knew I should have but scrambling board if I did; so much the
less worldly and less devilish the deed would be, I thought.
From that hour, I withdrew myself at early morning into secret corners of the ruined
house, and remained hidden there until she went to bed. At first, when meals were ready,
I used to hear them calling me; and then my resolution weakened. But I strengthened it
again by going farther off into the ruin, and getting out of hearing. I often watched for her
at the dim windows; and, when I saw that she was fresh and rosy, felt much happier.
Out of this holding her in my thoughts, to the humanising of myself, I suppose some
childish love arose within me. I felt, in some sort, dignified by the pride of protecting her,
- by the pride of making the sacrifice for her. As my heart swelled with that new feeling,
it insensibly softened about mother and father. It seemed to have been frozen before, and
now to be thawed. The old ruin and all the lovely things that haunted it were not
sorrowful for me only, but sorrowful for mother and father as well. Therefore did I cry
again, and often too.
The farm-house family conceived me to be of a morose temper, and were very short with
me; though they never stinted me in such broken fare as was to be got out of regular
hours. One night when I lifted the kitchen latch at my usual time, Sylvia (that was her
pretty name) had but just gone out of the room. Seeing her ascending the opposite stairs, I
stood still at the door. She had heard the clink of the latch, and looked round.

'George,' she called to me in a pleased voice, 'to-morrow is my birthday; and we are to
have a fiddler, and there's a party of boys and girls coming in a cart, and we shall dance. I
invite you. Be sociable for once, George.'
'I am very sorry, miss,' I answered; 'but I - but, no; I can't come.'
'You are a disagreeable, ill-humoured lad,' she returned disdainfully; 'and I ought not to
have asked you. I shall never speak to you again.'
As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire, after she was gone, I felt that the farmer bent
his brows upon me.
'Eh, lad!' said he; 'Sylvy's right. You're as moody and broody a lad as never I set eyes on
yet.'
I tried to assure him that I meant no harm; but he only said coldly, 'Maybe not, maybe not!
There, get thy supper, get thy supper; and then thou canst sulk to thy heart's content
again.'
Ah! if they could have seen me next day, in the ruin, watching for the arrival of the cart
full of merry young guests; if they could have seen me at night, gliding out from behind
the ghostly statue, listening to the music and the fall of dancing feet, and watching the
lighted farm-house windows from the quadrangle when all the ruin was dark; if they
could have read my heart, as I crept up to bed by the back way, comforting myself with
the reflection, 'They will take no hurt from me,' - they would not have thought mine a
morose or an unsocial nature.
It was in these ways that I began to form a shy disposition; to be of a timidly silent
character under misconstruction; to have an inexpressible, perhaps a morbid, dread of
ever being sordid or worldly. It was in these ways that my nature came to shape itself to
such a mould, even before it was affected by the influences of the studious and retired life
of a poor scholar.

SIXTH CHAPTER

BROTHER HAWKYARD (as he insisted on my calling him) put me to school, and told
me to work my way. 'You are all right, George,' he said. 'I have been the best servant the
Lord has had in his service for this five-and-thirty year (O, I have!); and he knows the
value of such a servant as I have been to him (O, yes, he does!); and he'll prosper your
schooling as a part of my reward. That's what HE'll do, George. He'll do it for me.'
From the first I could not like this familiar knowledge of the ways of the sublime,
inscrutable Almighty, on Brother Hawkyard's part. As I grew a little wiser, and still a
little wiser, I liked it less and less. His manner, too, of confirming himself in a parenthesis,
- as if, knowing himself, he doubted his own word,