from clement hazeldine to hermia rivers.
"in the course of our many talks together, you have more than once confided to me certain details of your earliest impressions and recollections. what i now want you to do is, to shut your eyes and go back in memory to those early days, and then to write down in detail, and with careful minuteness, everything you can call to mind about your childhood previously to your adoption by uncle john and aunt charlotte. i am afraid that all you can tell me will amount to very little, but i want the information in question for a certain purpose, about which i may have more to tell you by-and-bye. meanwhile, i shall await your reply with as much patience--or as little--as providence has seen fit to endow me with."
from hermia rivers to clement hazeldine.
"you are quite right in your assumption that anything i may be able to tell you of my earliest recollections will amount to very little. until i heard from uncle john the story of his adoption of me, i had no absolute knowledge of any existence apart from, or prior to, my life with him and aunt charlotte. it is true that i seemed to remember certain people and certain incidents with whom or which uncle and aunt seemed to be in no way mixed up, although there was nothing to prove to me that i was not living under uncle's roof at the time to which they referred. indeed, so shadowy were they that at times there came over me a doubt as to whether they had any basis of fact whatever; and in any case they lived in my recollections as so many faded pictures, which each year that passed tended to render dimmer and more indistinct; and there is little question that had it not been for what uncle john told me they would by-and-bye have vanished utterly from my memory.
"uncle john, as you are aware, had no information to give me beyond the fact that, after he had arranged to adopt me, i was taken to his house one evening after dark by a respectable-looking, middle-aged woman, who, judging from her appearance, might be the wife of a well-to-do mechanic. uncle asked no questions and the woman proffered no statement. she was not more than five minutes in the house, and he never saw her again.
"well, uncle john's statement threw me back upon myself, so to speak. again and again i went over my confused and half-forgotten recollections, striving to piece them together, and bring them into clearer relief, but to very little purpose, i'm afraid. however, i will now proceed to sketch for you in outline the three incidents, if i may term them such, which stand out most definitely in my memory as evidently pertaining to a time which i now know must have been anterior to that of my adoption.
"incident the first. i see myself, as a very little girl, seated in a shut-up carriage in company with a man and a woman, neither of whose faces i can bring to mind. i am hugging to my breast a gaily-dressed doll as my dearest earthly treasure. it is a gloomy evening, and the rain is falling fast. i seem to have been in the carriage a long time, jolting over the dreary country roads, but as to where i came from and how i happened to be there at all, i can remember nothing whatever. then i seem to wake up from sleep, roused by the sudden stoppage of the carriage, and, looking out, i see someone open two large iron gates, which swing slowly back on their hinges. but what takes my childish attention more than anything else is the fact that on the top of one of the supporting pillars--i can only see one from where i sit--there is fixed a strange-looking animal carved in stone, as it might be a griffin, or a dragon, holding a shield between its paws. but one half of the shield and one of the creature's paws are broken away and missing, and i remember thinking how strangely forlorn it looked in its maimed condition, and how the rain-drops, trickling from the end of its nose, seemed like tears, so that i felt quite to pity the poor thing.
"after that comes a blank.
"in the next scene of which i retain anything like a clear recollection--although how long a time elapsed between it and the preceding one i am unable to say--i am in a gloomy panelled room, the two high, narrow windows of which look out upon a small, semi-circular lawn shut in by a tall hedge. a case-clock in one corner ticks slowly and solemnly. against the wall on one side of the room stands a tall bureau of black oak carved with fruit and quaint figures. there is a large open fireplace, in which a few embers glow faintly red. on two high, straight-backed chairs sit two angular, straight-backed ladies; both elderly, both with long, thin faces, both having the same cold, unsympathetic eyes and the same frozen expression, and so much alike generally, that i can only now conclude they must have been sisters. as i stand before them in my white frock and bronze shoes, with my hands behind my back, i glance timidly from one to the other. they are talking about me in a language i don't understand; but all the same, i am quite aware that i am the subject of their conversation. it is growing dusk, and presently a man--the same, i fancy, that was with me in the carriage--brings in two lighted candles in silver candlesticks on a silver tray, and sets them down on the table between the two ladies. then one of the ladies takes up the snuffers--also of silver--and solemnly extinguishes one of the candles. somehow, i have an impression, how or whence derived i am quite at a loss to know, that it is a nightly custom for the manservant to bring in two lighted candles, and for one of them to be at once put out.
"the manservant, having raked together the dying embers in the grate, is on the point of leaving the room, when the same lady who had put out the candle holds up her hand, covered with a black lace mitten, to arrest him. 'you may take her away,' she says, evidently alluding to me. 'i have no wish ever to see her again.' with that, the man leads me by the hand from the room, and with the shutting of the door everything becomes a blank again.
"next i am in bed, where i am awakened by a kiss on my forehead. i open two sleepy eyes, to see for a moment a tall figure in white stealing from the room with a night-light in her hand. i do not see her face, but something tells me it is one of the two ladies whom i saw in the panelled room, but not the one who ordered me to be taken away.
"such, dear clement, are the particulars of three scenes which live more vividly in my memory than any others of a date prior to my passing into the charge of uncle john and aunt charlotte. i fail to see how they can prove of the slightest service to you in the quest you have undertaken for the sake of one who can but wish herself more worthy of so much love and devotion."
clement hazeldine to hermia rivers.
"you were altogether wrong, dearest, in assuming that the particulars which i received from you three days ago would prove of no service to me, as shall now be demonstrated to you.
"all along--that is to say, from the time i became aware that mr. hodgson had been practising in stavering for considerably more than a quarter of a century--the probability has seemed to me that the person or persons who employed him as their agent in your case would be found, if found at all, no great distance away from this place. in any case, and more especially after the receipt of your letter, i determined to make stavering the centre of a systematic process of search and inquiry, which i at once proceeded to put in execution. 'but a search for what?' i seem to hear you asking. you shall now be told.
"the first thing i did was to hire a dog-cart, and in addition secure the services of a driver who knew every road and lane for a dozen miles round stavering. thus equipped, i began my quest. the object i set before me first of all was to find a pair of old-fashioned lodge gates, one of the pillars of which was surmounted by a griffin rampant, or other heraldic monstrosity, supporting a broken shield, but minus one of its paws. for two days i scoured the country roads and byeways, but to no purpose. plenty of lodge gates i saw, surmounted, some of them, by one or another design in stone or stucco, but nowhere the particular one i was in search of. this morning, however, i was more fortunate.
"my driver had taken a road which we had not explored before. we had not gone more than three miles when we came to a pair of lodge gates of wrought iron, which drew my attention by their ruinous and neglected condition. the driver stopped at my request and i alighted in order to examine them more closely. the gates themselves, which were of an intricate and finely-wrought pattern, and must at one time have been very beautiful, were now thickly rusted and filthy with the grime of years, and having fallen forward a little, hung loosely together as though they were trying to support each other in their hour of misfortune. the padlock and chain which fastened them seemed to indicate that they were rarely, if ever, opened. close by, however, there was an arched entrance in the wall, evidently intended for pedestrians, with a rude, unpainted door which formed a fitting complement to the rusted gates. no figure of any kind crowned the square freestone pillars on which the gates were hung, yet they seemed to me to have a bare and unfinished aspect, as though they lacked some crowning adornment.
"pushing open the rude door, which yielded to my hand, i entered the park. inside were the remains of what had at one time been a two-storied lodge, which was now little more than the skeleton of a house, with huge gaps in its roof and a great part of its flooring gone, and scarcely a whole pane in its window-frames. unsightly weeds and great prickly brambles grew all about, and, in short, the whole scene was one of melancholy neglect and decay. stepping backward a pace or two, while wondering whether it would be worth my while to sketch the ruined lodge and its surroundings, i caught my foot against some hard substance in the rank grass, and with difficulty saved myself from falling. on looking down to ascertain the nature of the obstruction, my eyes caught sight of something which, as the saying goes, brought my heart into my mouth. there, half-buried among the docks and weeds, lay the identical object i had been at such pains to find--your mutilated griffin to wit, with its broken shield. how it had come there mattered nothing, but only that it was there. i drew a long breath, feeling little doubt that i had now in my hands the second link of the chain of which the first had been the tracing of mr. hodgson. where shall i find the third?
"the poor griffin, or whatever it may have been intended to represent, was lying on its side and looking very forlorn and dirty indeed. the first thing i did was to raise it into an upright position, then, with my pocket-knife, i partially cleared a small space around it of weeds and grass, and then i proceeded to make a sketch of it. that sketch i now send you for the purpose of verification. it seems to me most unlikely that there should have been two mutilated griffins and two broken shields; still, that such may have been the case is by no means impossible. but be that as it may, do not fail to drop me a line by return post and let me know whether you recognize the creature as being anything like the one seen by you that day out of the carriage window while waiting for the opening of the park gates.
"as soon as i got back to the dog-cart i began to question the driver, but all i could elicit from him was that the name of the mansion inside the park, of which, however, nothing could be seen from the lodge, is broome, and that its sole inmate, with the exception of a few domestics, is a certain miss pengarvon, a lady well advanced in years, whom the fellow described in terse but caustic terms, as being 'a reg'lar old varmint, and no mistake.'
"to-morrow i shall prosecute my inquiries with regard to the aforesaid miss pengarvon."
hermia rivers to clement hazeldine.
"the sketch you have sent me is an exact counterpart of the sculptured creature seen by me so many years ago. the sight of it has brought back the whole scene to my memory as freshly as if it belonged to yesterday."
