II.

My earliest recollections of my father do not extend to his form or lineaments. I remember nothing of him except his voice, the tone of which lingers as distinctly in my ear to this hour as if I had heard it yesterday. It was low and tremulous, and seemed to have a thrill in it of suffering, or anger, I know not which. The only parent I knew was my mother, with whom I lived in a solitude that I can not contemplate at this distance of time without shuddering.

Our house was situated on a lonely moor in the north of England, close upon the bleak border--a dismal neighborhood, savage, cold, and desolate. It was built so far back as the reign of Richard II., and with its flanking walls, crumbling on all sides into ruin, and its paved court-yards, covered a considerable area. Most of the apartments were large and gloomy, and hung with arras of so great an age, that the colors had grown dim, and the thread in many places appeared to be dropping into powder. Long corridors and smaller rooms ran round the quadrangle; and as the uses for which this huge pile was designed by its founders had long since passed away with the bands of retainers and extravagant pomp that distinguished the days of feudal hospitality and royal progresses, only a small part of it was kept up in an inhabitable condition by my mother. Unfortunately for my after life, the part so preserved lay in the very centre of the mansion, approachable only by dark passages, utterly obscure at night, and barely lighted in the day-time by narrow latticed windows, such as we see indented in the thick walls of old cloisters. To reach the inhabited rooms it was necessary to make many windings, to twine up a short spiral stair that led from the outer court, and to traverse two sides of the quadrangle.

This was always a fearful thing to me, which use by no means deprived of its terrors. There were many legends whispered from one to another in the winter nights of revolting crimes which had taken place there in former times, and which rose re-embodied before me as I cowered past the spots where they were said to have been enacted. The aspect of the dreary building, within and without, by day and night, made it all real. If the moon shone brightly into the passages, strange shadows were discernible flitting across the floor or creeping up the walls; and as I involuntarily glanced through shattered doors and inner casements, remnants of armor hanging about, and fragments of tapestry fluttering against the windows, and other relics of a 'sheeted ancestry,' would seem to glide out of the darkness, and fill the open spaces with forms swaying and undulating before my eyes. I remember how my limbs used to totter under me as I tried not to see these sights, and crept on, stifling the fear that was distilling drops of agony over my body by the greater fear of uttering a cry, lest the slightest noise might bring worse horrors round me. I am speaking of my childhood--and children will understand me.

Let no man scoff at these terrors. The wisest and bravest have quailed under them. Skepticism may laugh, but it would be more profitably employed in endeavoring to solve the problems which concern the connection between the material and the spiritual universe. Why is it that adults, as well as children, are impressed with a certain uneasiness in the dark? Not a fear of ghosts, or robbers, or accidents, or of any thing upon which the mind can reason, or of which the senses are cognizant; but a vague consciousness of invisible influences. In the daylight we have no such sensations; they belong exclusively to silence and darkness.

As a child, I grew up in the awe of these influences, fostered by loneliness and the moody companionship of a wayward woman, who held little intercourse with the outer world, and shut herself up in dreams and superstitions. An incident which occurred at this period helped to give a supernatural turn to many circumstances that were, no doubt, capable of a simple solution.

Toward the extremity of a court to the south of the old pile, there was a chasm in the ground, partly filled up with loose stones and brambles. The whole place was over-run with grass and weeds, and the walls and outbuildings that surrounded it were in ruins. I had heard that this spot, which gaped so grimly through the tall, lank bushes and accumulated rubbish, was formerly the entrance to a series of subterranean galleries, that had been excavated below the foundations for the purpose of concealing troops, or stowing away prisoners, in times of trouble; and that they had been used in that way during the Civil War, when the mansion stood out a long siege against some of Fairfax's generals. An irresistible curiosity to explore these galleries seized upon me. I was fascinated by the very fear with which the stories related about them had inspired me. I never could pass that yawning chasm, which, now nearly choked up, was hardly wide enough to admit of the descent of a grown person, without longing to plunge into its depths. I often lingered there in the twilight, when the shadows were falling about, enhancing the terror and the temptation; and one evening in the autumn I took courage, and, clearing away the brambles with trembling hands, I forced myself down, bringing with me a torrent of stones and earth.

Finding my feet at the bottom, and rubbing my eyes, I tried to grope my way onward. At first there was a dim light at a great distance above me, in a slanting direction, but in an instant afterward I was in total darkness. My first impulse was to laugh at the exploit I had achieved; but as I pattered along, plashing sometimes in pools of water, and sometimes knocking my head against the rough stones that jutted out on each side, my mirth deserted me. When I became accustomed to the darkness, I fancied I could discern shapeless figures rising up and vanishing in the gloom--the walls seemed to move out of their places, and heave to and fro like wrecks in a storm--then they would open, and collapse, and disappear: all was in motion, black and tumultuous, and a surging sound, as of winds and waters lashing and wailing in a confined space, moaned dismally in my ears. Even when I closed my eyes, and pressed my fingers upon them to shut out these sights, they were still before me. This was, of course, the work of mere fright; but what followed can not be so easily accounted for.

While I stood hesitating how I should proceed, for I had lost my track, and knew not whether I ought to go backward or forward, I heard a distinct rushing sound, quite close to me. It swept past, and all was silent again. It was like a rush of silk or satin, or some fabric that, suddenly crushed, gives out a crackling noise. All the blood in my body gathered into my head; my eyes emitted fire, as if they had been struck by a cord. A stifling sensation bubbled up to my throat, and I involuntarily uttered a cry, which was echoed from a hundred recesses, and continued at intervals, reverberating like a succession of shots in the distance. I panted with horror, as I grasped the wall and listened. My fear was too great to suffer me to cry out for help. The apprehension of again invoking these dreadful echoes appalled me; I hardly breathed, and stood still to listen, I know not how long. A death-like silence pervaded the darkness. The soughing of the winds had ceased, or I fancied so, the stillness was so heavy. It may be that my faculties were intent upon that palpable sound I had heard, and could distinguish nothing else.

At last I began to move, treading softly, and stopping at intervals to watch and listen. I had scarcely proceeded in this way a dozen paces, when I felt as plainly as if I saw the object in the broad glare of the sun, a quick motion at my side in a nook or crevice of the wall. It was like the effort of a person to shrink down and escape from me. In an excess of fright and desperation I clutched at it with my hands, and caught it--I say caught it, for a substance resembling a thick silk filled the palms of both my hands. I held it with the grasp of one who was struggling for life, and tried to speak, but my tongue was dry; and I could not articulate a word: and while I held it, I was conscious that the object was moving away--it moved away, and still I thought I held it. I had not the power to loosen my fingers, which I had a strong impulse to do--and then the silk glided out of them, although they were coiled in it--and the next moment a grasp of muscles, cold and sharp, was on my neck, and pressed into my flesh. I was distraught with terror, and my senses forsook me.

When I recovered, I found myself lying on a couch in the great room, my mother sitting at a distance, and an ancient female servant watching over me.

This woman was the oldest domestic in the house. She had lived all her life in the family, and had seen two generations into the grave. It was from her lips I had learned most of the traditions that filled my head with such alarm and curiosity; it was from her I had acquired a knowledge of those subterranean passages in which I had encountered this singular adventure; and as soon as my mother left the room I related the whole story to her. She heard it to the end with a dark expression of anger on her face, which I interpreted into a reproof on my willfulness and folly in venturing into such places; and then she questioned me severely as to what I heard and saw, and what I thought it could have been. Finding that I could give her no satisfactory answers to these questions, she enjoined me to hold my tongue about it, and above all things not to speak of it to my mother. She rated me soundly for saying that I firmly believed I had caught something like a woman's dress in my hands; and she made me feel her old stuff gown, that I might assure myself it was no such texture as that. "How could I be so silly as to suppose that a woman, or even a man, would hide in vaults and passages that had not been opened for hundreds of years? What could I imagine they were doing there? It was more likely that rats, and toads, and bats were to be found there than human beings." And a great deal more to the like effect, as if she wanted to impress upon me that it was altogether the fancy of a distempered brain, and no reality.

Yet, in spite of every thing she said, my conviction remained unaltered. I could not be deceived in a fact so clearly attested by my own sensations. But the mystery was never cleared up; and I brooded over it in secret so perversely, that it exercised a blighting influence for a long time upon my imagination.

Many years afterward a suspicion crossed my mind, that this woman knew more about the matter than she cared to acknowledge. It was she who carried me into the house, having discovered me, as she stated, lying insensible in the court-yard; but I had no recollection of having found my way out into the air--a circumstance which at the time did not present itself to me in the light in which I am disposed to regard it now. Nor should I, perhaps, have been led to suspect her of duplicity, had she not acted with ingratitude at a time when sorrow and misfortune had fallen upon the house that had nurtured her from infancy.