CHAPTER I.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, The soul that rises with us, our Life’s star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home.--WORDSWORTH.

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born.

That I was born! I who now sit in this remote and solitary study, of whose mysteries my good neighbours speak reverently with doubt and wonder, encompassed with things immortal!--the everlasting elements without, the stream, the hills, the fruitful earth, which has been and shall be until the end of time; within with things of life, instinct and inherent, fated perchance to live longer than this present world, the books of men--the Book of God--that out of darkness and sleep and unconsciousness, I was born!

These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution--this everlasting living soul, _began_. My mind loses itself in these depths. Strangely significant and solemn are the commonest phrases of our humanity; the words which veil the constant marvels of our miraculous life!

But this of “he was born” is greater in my eyes, than that other of “he died.” Say you, He died? say rather, He has changed his garments, has put off a fading robe, which by and by--perchance a time as short in Heaven’s account as are these fleeting days to us--he shall put on again, to wear for ever. But in yonder anxious house, in yonder dim room, with life’s plaintive music rising on his unconscious ear, in wailing and tears, its natural utterance, this wonderful soul began. Be solemn in your rejoicing, ye new mothers, ye glad attendant friends; for this that hath come into the world shall abide for ever, this new existence is beyond the breath or touch of death, a thing immortal, a presence which shall outlive the world.

I was born sadly, in gloom which none broke by the voice of thanksgiving, for the two greatest things of human life met in my birth-hour. I entered the world, a fit entrance for my long, clouded course; and solemnly, in pain and grief, my mother went forth to the other country. My young, fair, gentle mother, of whom I think now as of some beautiful dream that crossed me in my youth.

My father was a hard man, who loved the world; but I used to hear long ago that this moved him. Most deeply all my life has it moved me, who never knew the girl who was my mother. She has been a vision hovering about me all my days; saintly and mother-like when I was young, but now, in her pale beauty resembling more a dead child of the old man who is her son.

I dwell upon this perhaps too often, when I am sad--and I am truly sad too often, for I am alone; but it is surely well and blessed to preserve in the safe keeping of death this holy fragrance of youth. The years that have mossed her grave, and made the blood thin and chill in my old veins, have brought no change to her--she is young for ever.

My father was a Graeme of Mossgray. In our own Southland district we are chief of the name; but he did not esteem the traditional honour that belonged to the title--it was mere idle breath to him. The principal part of his life was spent in a distant city. He laboured without ceasing, for I know not what reason. I fancy there had been some ambition in him to accumulate one of those fairy fortunes, which very prosaic and ordinary men do achieve sometimes, though what end he proposed to himself in attaining this, I cannot tell, for he himself was becoming old, and I was nothing to him; even as the heir of his name he bestowed no regard on me; for the name itself was indifferent. He would have thrown it into the scale with any piece of merchandise, and known himself nothing the poorer.

But a spell was upon this fortune of his, so constantly pursued. His prosperity never passed a certain limit. It was as though some malicious spirit had the guiding of his fate in this respect, in vengeance of better blessings unused and slighted. He always began with success and good fortune; the delusive promise lasted long enough to lure him deeper and deeper into the snare, and then the tide began to swell and turn, and on its rising waves his hopes went bitterly out into the blank and cheerless sea. It was a sad fate, and had his objects been worthier, a fate to be deeply sympathised with; but the man was a hard man (I scarcely knew him, though he was my father); and was susceptible to no grief but this. That discipline, wise as it must be, most hard as it is always, which strikes us through our dearest things, could not touch him except in those outward matters of wealth and mercantile credit, which to him were all in all; and on these accordingly the stroke fell.

So heavily it came at last, that in his wilful selfishness he resolved to sell Mossgray. There was no one living to plead for me, a child then, scarcely daring to lift up my eyes in his presence, and for my right to this inheritance, descended from many upright fathers to whom its very name and local place were dearer than fortune. But death stepped in again to save for me a home--a home which has been to me a blessed inheritance, a solace in the midst of some evils--from other some a refuge and a shelter.

I was a solitary child, allowed in this lonely house of Mossgray to grow up, neglected and uncared for, as I best could. My childish memories are rich in dreams and spiritual presences, and overshadowed universally by that vague sadness, which, dumb as it is, and quiet, is so pitiful in children. I remember how the leaves were wont to fall from the old elms and alders by the waterside, with their eerie and plaintive sound. I remember the low sweeping cadence of the water--the disconsolate autumn breeze--and then comes upon me again the blank childish heaviness--the cloud of childish melancholy, that knew not how it was made sad, nor why.

Mossgray had been a peelhouse--one of those fortified places which the exigencies of Border warfare, predatory and otherwise, made so necessary in our district. A high, square tower occupies the centre, with narrow windows, and arrow slits piercing its massy wall, which has been of old strong in all needful capabilities of defence, and could yet be a notable hold, if our peaceful Cumberland neighbours took up their warlike trade again.

About the tower cling irregular offshoots, added by many Lairds of Mossgray since peace became paramount on the Border; in which, it is impossible to deny, my good ancestors have studied convenience more than elegance. Yet the group of buildings high and low, angled and rounded, with the dark and rugged tower rising in the midst, have a charm upon them, greater, as I think, than the fascination of regular beauty. Patches of moss and yellow lichen are on the walls and roof--the grey, thick walls, and sombre slated roof, which look themselves like some natural growth of the earth, firmly rooted in kindly soil. Our doors are many now, and broad and easy of access--for the successive Graemes, who have increased the accommodations of Mossgray, have added entrance to entrance, with a prodigality by no means pleasant when those searching winds are abroad; but we still preserve the harsh and lowering portal, and the heavy iron door, which of old frowned upon unwelcome southern visitors in sullen defiance.

I confess that I have a pleasure in looking upon these--it pleases me to trace historic changes in the aspect of my patrimonial house; that this belongs of natural right to the rugged and sturdy times of Border warfare--that from that gloomy turret with its spiral stair, the golden shield of Scotland was gloomily taken down by one who had fought in her cause, when Mary crossed the Firth on her last fatal journey to trust the false courtesies of England. That in this dark chamber, a godly Lady Mossgray sheltered the persecuted hinds and shepherds, whose faith has added them to the ranks of our truest chivalry in Scotland. That this enlarged and decorated hall in the basement of the tower bears witness to the peace of the third William’s reign. That these gradually accumulating walls carry on the chronicle through the less eventful times of modern history--that here we have been dwelling, through all vicissitudes prosperous and adverse, in our own land and among our own people for five hundred certain years. There remembrances I acknowledge are dear to me. I lose my own individuality when I leave Mossgray.

And in a vague mist of dreamy romance and childish reverie, these histories hung incumbent on my mind when my dim days began. They lived with me, a host of mingled times and shapes, more real, as I fancy yet, than the common every-day things I saw around. The chill of cold-heartedness, the absence of truth, strike with a strange, blank, unexpressed pain, upon the heart of a child--and from these I turned to dwell, where warriors and Border maidens had dwelt before me, among the true knights and fair ladies of a yearning fancy, whose indefinite pageants and minstrelsies had yet more truth of nature in them than the hollow external forms of the life that men called real.--

“Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized,”

oppressed me on all sides then--but I had no misgivings as to the beautiful olden times--they were past, and they were true!

At our feet in this Mossgray runs a water, of some importance as we flatter ourselves. Flowing downward placid and calm from the hills, it has attained a considerable breadth and volume before it passes our old walls. And, by what chance I know not, our stream has been kept in its native pride of woodland and green banks safe from encroachments of cultivation. We have glades whose grassy undulations and noble solitary trees might match with any park in England, and we have thickly-wooded deans, closing in arched foliage over our river, with fretting rocks and waterfalls peculiarly our own. Scattered cot-houses to whom this water is a dear companion--quaint and dewy villages lying under the trees, with glimmerings of softened light about them, from the sky above and the stream below. Mills picturesque in their mossy homeliness throwing the drowsy stir of rural labour across the placid water--these are our friends and neighbours at Mossgray.

Nor do we lack, in our quiet country, inhabitants more distinguished. If I pursue my walk southward for a mile, I come upon a brave stone bridge, spanning with its stately arches the pleasant river; and across the bridge appear the many-coloured roofs of the town of Fendie in their varieties of thatch and slate, and homely red tiles, congregated happily together for mutual friendship and traffic. A very tranquil rural town, along whose streets the sunbeam slants drowsily in summer, with scarce a passing figure to break its brightness; but withal a busy borough, alive with many interests, and esteeming itself in innocent vanity and self-complacence, very far in advance of the simple “country” over which it sways its little sceptre, in all the arts and luxuries of life.

Withal, our water carries ships, and where it pours itself into the Firth, has wealthy fisheries upon its margin, and beholds long ranks of guileful nets, in which its receding waters help the fishermen to snare the glistening grilse and lordly salmon, born by the hundred in its silent caves. Our vessels are of no great burden, and boast but homely names--“Williams” and “Janets,” “Johns” and “Marys”--for our ship-owners name their cherished boats after their still more cherished children; but all of them proudly bear the emblazoned name of Fendie. To all of them the Waterfoot is a delicious haven, fragrant with the breath of home.

The grey walls of Mossgray have at all times been home to me--although a quiet and sad one often, to the man no less than to the solitary child they sheltered long ago. I remember well the pensive childish musings of that time; the dreamy gladness with which I wandered on those bright summer mornings by the pleasant water, my sole friend and playmate then, as it is my best companion now; and that unspeakable loneliness and desolation which came to me on the drooping wing of the plaintive autumn breeze. It is all indefinite and vague now as it was then. The little moralist of ten twelvemonths beginning to think how swiftly those waves of his young life glided by--the meditative, pensive boy looking on while his compeers in years pursued their sports, with his bashful wish to join them, and his sorrowful dreamy thoughts about their unthinking mirth. I recall these as a succession of dim pictures--the history of a beginning life, forlorn as only childhood can be.