The Lake Boy Read online

  Mid the rich store of nature’s gifts to man

  Each has his loves, close wedded to his soul

  By fine association’s golden links.

  As the Great Spirit bids creation teem

  With conscious being and intelligence,

  So man, his miniature resemblance, gives

  To matter’s every form a speaking soul,

  An emanation from his spirit’s fount,

  The impress true of its peculiar seal.

  Here finds he thy best image, sympathy.

  In a post scriptum he rebuked me, with fair enough show of courtesy, for obscuring my gender from him during our initial correspondence, such that he only found it out soon before writing to me. I feel the dreadful mendacity of this more pressingly than I did before. In the afternoon I wept so that my shift became wet withal.

  22nd March

  Die sabbati requies est. Mr. W and his aunt, Mrs Eliza Jones, came early to attend church; and she to bid farewell for a time, for she was returning to the west for some weeks the morrow morn. It was gracious in her.

  G. preached on John 8:48-59, and his theme was Death is not Known in the Life with Christ. At the portion where the Jews say unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? And Jesus replies, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. And took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by – I wept. After the service Eliza took my arm and walked with me.

  So solicitous she was that I confessed all my recent disorder of the mind, and admitted to seeing a ghost, or spirit, or devil, or what it might be. I confessed further that my brother was concerned for the wellbeing of my mind – and told her (poor lady! She had hardly asked for so much) of my time in Clare House under restraint, and of the sorrow of my parents at my erratic behaviour, and at the way a high and giddy soul would take possession of me. In all this she comforted me, and we walked the length of Blaswater fell, and then, it being sunny, to the top of Brandreth Hill, where we were alone save one old woman gathering furze. We sat together, and she consoled me further, and embraced me, and I wept in sheer relief. ‘Do not be hasty to condemn your senses,’ she advised. ‘Do you not know this land is rich in stories and witches and ghosts? Blaswater is the deepest lake in the district, and who knows how many bodies it has claimed? Some say their spirits wander the shore.’

  I laughed at this, and so she, and with great delicacy she thus restored the good mood. We came home, pausing in a copse to embrace, with loving kindness, and my heart sang like a bird. The sun set that day in robin redbreast colours, and I wept with happiness to have found so true a friend. How clever her fingers! How solicitous of my happiness. How sorry I shall be to be denied her company for the months to come.

  23rd March

  Monday. A grey, sad day; I barely able to rowse myself, and no work done upon my Latin. I mark this day with a black stone.

  ⓿

  26th

  On this day I saw again the ghostly boy, loitering in the churchyard between the vicarage and the church. I, being full of fury for reasons that are beyond my ken, came flying from the front door to rebuke him. I found him not there, but, looking back at the house, saw him at the upstairs window, he the while gazing down upon me with a strange expression upon his ruined countenance. A cold drizzle began, like ocean spray after a great wave, say, has broken on the seawall, soft and falling slow, yet very chill. The door had shut behind me and was stiff with the damp weather, and I wept in vexation as I hauled and battered it, until Molly came down in a fright thinking me a robber and called through the wood that she would send for a constable – as if we lived still in London, the foolish hen! I, crying betimes, gathered myself and after some importuning persuaded her to open the door (which she, in her panic, had locked), and so I came in wet as a bather, and rushed upstairs – but my room, of course empty, mocked me, and on returning down I slipped and bruised my back leg blue in the fall.

  27th

  George received certain letters today. From one he read aloud news of the British Army evacuated from Bremen in the Flanders Campaign, under the command of the Duke of York, and the ill news this be for his friend Samuel Pettison, who has gone thither to spread the minister to all Anglicans caught up in the war. After this thought, as I rose to assist Molly with the dinner, he added, as if it were an unimportant post-script, that Miss. Bainbridge will visit in a fortnight. He thought I daresay to avoid my vexation with this incidental telling, yet was I vexed, and wept. ‘Where will she stay? Not here, there is not room enough a cottage for the likes of her!’ George, growing angry after the restrained manner of his character, sent Molly out of the house on some pretext and took down the crop he had stored above the sideboard. He bade me remember our father’s dying instruction, that he not spare the rod with me when I flew into one of my insanities, and requested in a low voice whether chastisement was needful on this occasion? I stretched myself on the boards, weeping full, and clutched his ancles and begged him no, no – and he wept too, then, for his heart is not hard. He kept clearing his throat with that specially resonant sound he makes when most sad. He has never struck me since our father passed, and I do not know if he has the mettle so to do. Then he raised me up and embraced me and spoke more kindly words to me: as, would I spoyl his chances with Miss Bane (as I call her, secretly) for marriage and the funds it would bring? Would I truly wish to remain here, in this faraway place, and deny him preferment in the Church, and a life again in the South? I, of course, cried no, and no, and no – but my wicked heart was calling yea! – for I bethought me of Eliza, Eliza, and wanted to be with her, tho it be in the glitter-freeze of the northern pole!

  Molly returned, poking her nose in like a mouse, and I looked as dignified as I might. I spent an hour working at one single sentence of moderate Latin, and my breast was a tempest within.

  29th

  I have neglected to set down the occurrences of this week that follows, so I do not recollect how we disposed of ourselves to-day.

  5th [April].

  Sabbath.

  6th.

  I do not remember this day.

  7th.

  A cold and blustery morning. I walked half of the way along Blaswater shore, and watched the motion of the waves. There is a quality to the surface of the waters like hammered pewter, and the grey is glaucos, which is to say, it hath blue and green within aye a metallic sheen, and something divine too. The tiger’s eye is reputed amber in colour, yet Eliza’s eye is blue-grey as the Goddess Athena, and she the truer tiger.

  A little boat upon the turbid water, and a boy within it, fishing – tho too distant for me to see if it be he.

  9th.

  Basil is our guest for two nights, and sleeping toe-to-head in G.’s bed for want of space. He, G. and I walked to the hill-tops, a very cold bleak day. We were mocked on our return by a severe hailstorm. Basil recited Shakspere for us after supper, and the words brought sorrow beautifully out of my soul. I wept, which he took a great sign of favour.

  10th

  The News from London is of the marriage of the Prince of Wales.

  11th.

  I have no memory of this day.

  13th.

  I look over this diary and find I can remember nothing of the fortnight, save the image of the boy in the rowing boat upon the turbid waters, and that I thought a dream. Or did I see it, true? I weep often. George appears as the hallclock chimes, with hourly regularity, and his face a painted picture of concern. I assure him things are well.

  16th.

  Walked I know not where.

  18th A[pril].

  No memory of this day.

  April 23rd.

  Walked by the thin light of the horned moon. A comet in the sky over Glinster Coombe, a blurred dot of light with a pigtail of white drawn behind it. My heart was filled with sweetness, and sweetness in my soul, at the sight. I watched it, and then in an instant
of purest wonder, I bethought myself that the comet was coming down to earth, to nestle yea in the valley of Blaswater itself! But the light was a lantern, and it bobbed out along the road; and then it was George, and Old Harold who is lay warden for the church. They had been searching me, and George wrapped me in his cloak, and together they led me to the house.

  24th

  George brought me tea for breakfast, which I drank with a good will.

  Strange lights in the skies again, this night.

  25th

  I have not seen the scarred boy in a week, and this after a time (I do believe) when I saw him every day.

  26th Sunday.

  My first attendance at church for some time. Several congregants solicitous for my health. G. has put it about that I have had a fever, which is not the truth. How it pains him to utter even the whitest of lies!

  Two

  27th Monday.

  George about on parish business the morn, and returning at noon hungry – for he rose before dawn, and omitted to break his fast. His face very grim, and his cough worse than usual. We sit quiet and eat some bread and cheese together, he with a glass of old wine sweetened from its sourness with sugar, and I with small beer. ‘Where is Molly?’ I asked him, in innocency and he looked very severe upon me, so that I quailed.

  So we talk, and he tells me: Molly has returned over the hills to her father’s farm. And the cause is me, for (he says) I approached her in a manner gross, and she fled from the vicarage. I have no memory of this. ‘When I confronted you,’ George says, ‘you begged forgiveness upon the holy sepulchre, and I granted it, insofar as it is in my humble power as a sinner to do so. You swore you had put all such unnaturalness behind you. You swore,’ he meeting my gaze very hard, ‘upon the Bible.’ This the Bible our mother clutched to her breast as she died; so my oath was solemn indeed.

  I nodded at this: ‘the memory was so ill,’ I told him, ‘that my mind has repelled it, and given it no house in my skull. I am heartily sorry, brother, for my behaviour, and I shall remedy myself I promise.’

  ‘You have had,’ he says, not now able to meet my gaze, ‘a relapse, dear sister.’

  ‘I fear so. But with God’s help it shall be the last!’

  ‘I have been in communication with an honest fellow called Magnoble, who keeps a house in Yorkshire that –’ But this I did not wish to hear, for I knew the meaning of it well enough, and recalled my time before in the London asylum, it being no experience I wish ever to repeat. So I wept and embraced him and begged him say no more for I would be good.

  Then, at George’s instigation, we prayed together, on our knees right there in the parlour. And my heart was lightened. When I asked who shall be our maid-of-all-works, he told me that old Mrs Gill, the widow, was filling that role, yet not sleeping in the stair cubby but making her way over from Hattonhill, and so not in the house every day.

  Then he told me sad news: a young boy had, it seemed, drowned in Blaswater lake. At this my heart quailed within me, so I asked for the story, and looking sideways at mine reaction to ensure I was not permitting the news to upset me, told me the story. He was an orphan boy, who lived, it is said, with Farmer Mawbeer, a surly fellow who does not attend church. There are stories of his farm, said G., for he keeps a number of boys there to work the fields, and all are orphans. ‘For all we know,’ said George, ‘he works from Christian Charity and the noblest motives, for who but God knows everyone’s heart? Still, the gossip in the alleys is that he is a slaver and beats the boys, feeds them gruel and makes them work all the hours, even on the Sabbath day – for, according to the report of Farmer Smithson, over Hattonstreather way, this Mawbeer insists on working that day as any other. The beasts need tending that day as all through the week, he says, and an idle Sunday is an indulgence only the wealthy can afford. George shook his head. ‘Perhaps the fellow is a heathen. At any rate, the boy is supposed to have run off, and several people saw him by the lake, and then Mrs Granstone said she saw him run, as if pursued by hounds, straight at the water. She said there were lights after him – perhaps Mawbeer was pursuing him, with a lantern.’

  ‘It was dark, then?’ I asked.

  ‘I believe it so – dusk, tho perhaps no dark night. Mrs Grastone’s account is not clear, for you know what a muddlemind she is. She says the lights flew in the sky. She says the boy swam so well, hard t’ward the middest of the lake, it seemed he walked upon the water.’

  ‘Like Christ!’ I said; but the scowl with which G. greeted this blasphemous comparison silenced me.

  ‘But on this point she is adamant,’ he went on. ‘That the lad ran to the lake, and afterward he swam. Perhaps he hoped to reach the far side, altho why swim the breadth and not walk around, I know not. A ragged boy, underfed, unused to swimming – and plunging into the cold waters after sunset? Blaswater has swallowed him, I fear.’

  ‘What was his name?’ I asked.

  George did not know. ‘Tom, I think. Or so someone told me. Unless I imagined it? Or Tom be a generic?’

  So much speechifying provoked his cough, and he racked his throat and chest so much that he was compelled to lie down for a while. When he did this, I walked alongside the palings and up to the peak of the Coombe, to clear my head. The poor plight of the boy was sorrowful; but he could hardly have been a ghost before he drowned! Perhaps the boy was in the habit of running off, and this was the apparition I had seen, so many times – tho that hardly answered to most of the times I had seen him. If it be a ghost, I said to myself, it must be the ghost of some other boy; and in sooth there was no shortage of orphan boys, what with the war and the hard harvests.

  May 3rd

  Die sabbati requies est

  4th

  Mr Withers called, to assure himself (he said) of my return to health. But he stayed so long, and drank two brews of tea, and chattered so gabblingly of the news – there are fears the Prussians will again carve Poland into portions, and the talk in London is of the volume Poetical Sketches, by Miss Anne Batten Cristall, which perchance he mentioned only to encourage me in my ambitions (I know not, nor of her). We talked also of the sad news of the drowned boy, that I began to suspect his earnestness had something of a romantic kind to it. Perhaps I misconceive. I bethought myself of how far he falls below his aunt in comeliness.

  A little after eleven Mrs Gill came in, and at this like a hare young Withers was startled away, bowing before me like a Prussian himself, with his heels together, and announcing himself inexpressibly delighted that I was returned to health, and in such bloom. I saw him to the door, and for the first time took a true look at him – medium height, complexion a little dark, and with the dots of his stubble black as soot, like smuts on a leaf. His hair is lustrous, and there is a sweetness in the shape of his eyes, but I think his only because they remind me, I fear, of his aunt. As he left he dropt the remark (as if it the least significant matter in the world!) that Eliza was again stopping with him, and I had to hold myself from running after him begging him to give her my dearest good wish and begging her to call.

  I walked in the wood after, my heart full of strange joy. The place was rich in flowers, and I was sorry not to know their names – a beautiful palish golden flower, thick and round in the body, the petals doubled, very sugared in its smell; another bloom I recognised as cranesbill, like little clasps of imperial purple; the grassy-leaved white flower with petals like rabbit-ears, wild strawberries still green, scentless violets, anemones, two kinds of orchises, primroses, the heckberry very lovely, the crab coming out as a low shrub.

  Above the wood I sat on the grass and stared across Blaswater: too sublime a vista to accord with thoughts of drowning! And yet drowned the boy was, and how many thousands before him? The water blue now, as hard looking as sapphire. On the return I met an old man, driving a very large beautiful cow with two sticks. Down again into the valley, green with youth and hope.

  13th May.

  Miss Bainbridge arrived today, with her maid Pamela and her coac
hman – he slept in the coach. George has new-painted his own bedroom walls, and given it over to Miss B. to share with her companion, whilst he has had Harry put together a cot-bed inside the church, over the organ. I was not disarranged from my own sleeping arrangements, and, God be thanked, news of her arrival reached the house an hour before she did, for her coach was spotted on the north road where it had stopped with a wheel in a rut. So I had time to ready myself, and was smiling and ready when she came in, and embraced her (I said) as the sister she would soon become.

  She smiled in return, and we all took a late luncheon together around the table, Miss B. the while scanning the smallness of the chamber with poorly concealed contempt. She raised her veil for lunch and I strove not to stare at her face; yet the pockmarks are so deep and puckered it is very hard not to. The constellation is a cluster, no mere plow or Orion’s belt. Yet it is not her fault she caught the smallpox, and (as G. hath told me, once) our fortune too, for had she kept her youthful beauty she would not be settling for a marriage with a mere vicar. And I pray to God my heart is not poxed itself, with avarice, to think of what her money will do – for George, and his preferment in the South.

  She made conversation with G. mostly, and listened to his replies with her head aslant. She begged him to meditate aloud upon the terms of the Grace he had read before we ate, and he did so. Finally she turned to me, and asked of my news.