THERE was no possibility of a walk that day.  We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Byron, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter morning clouds had brought with them a somber, dark feeling that befell all of us.  The rain hitting the window kept me entranced, thinking that now any kind of out-door exercise was out of the question.

            I was glad: I never liked long walks, especially in chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the chilly air penetrating my bones and it only served to increase the physical bizarreness I had in contrast to Mary, Peter, and Viola Byron. 

            The said Mary, Peter, and Viola were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy.  Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, “ She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but until she heard from Rita (our nanny), and could discover by her own observation that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner, ---something lighter, franker, more natural as it were---she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.”

            “ What does Rita say I have done?” I asked.

            “ Ran, I don’t like cavilers or questioners: besides there is something truly forbidding in a child that takes up his elders in that manner.  Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.”

A small breakfast-room adjoined the drawing room.  I slipped there.  It contained a book-case: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures.  I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and having drawn the red curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear day.  At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of the winter afternoon.  Afar, it offered a kind of solace with its pale blank of mist and cloud; near the wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain.

            I returned to my book----History of the development of the Sword: the letter-press thereof I cared not for, generally speaking, I loved to caress with my eyes the sleek platinum, that I as a child was easily bribed with.  I studied those artifacts that came from the coast of Norway, gross monstrosities of a sword made for the giants that inhabited the isle.  

“The grip is a bit thick for prime combat use, but it is relatively comfortable for a large hand in dry handling. Reasonably quick in piazza box drills. Excellent harmonics. The sword grip feels solid with very little felt shock in cutting exercises.

Before taking any measurements, I looked at the edges of the sword. The thickness at the edge before grinding the edge appears to be heavier than 1.5mm {.06 inches or 1/16 inch} The edge is ground to approx 90 degrees included. Not what I would consider optimum for martial arts use.”

I found plenty of entertainment in reading of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with “ the vast sweep of the Artic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space, ----that reservoir of frost and snow where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigors of extreme cold.”

Each picture told a mysterious story about a land that I could only visit with my imagination.  It was mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting: as interesting as the tales Rita sometimes narrated on winter evenings when she chanced to be in good humour to help ease my troubled dreams. 

With the book on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my way.  I feared nothing but interruption, and that came soon.  The breakfast-room door opened.

            “ Boh! Monsieur, Mope!” cried the voice of Peter Byron; then he paused finding the room obviously empty.

            “ Where in the dickens is he?” he continued.  “ Mary! Vi! (calling to his sisters) Ran is not here: tell mama he is run out into the rain---bad animal!”

            “ It is well I drew the curtain thought I at the moment. I wished the little fiend would not find my hiding place, nonetheless, that was too much to hope for.  Peter was of slow wit, however, Mary putting her head in the door said at once:---

            “ He is in the window-seat, to be sure Pete.”

And I came out immediately, for I feared at the idea of being dragged forth by the said Pete.

            “ What do you want?” I asked, with awkward diffidence.

            “ Say, ‘what do you want, Master Byron,’” was the answer.  “ I want you to come here;” and seating himself in am arm-chair, he intimated by a gesture that I was to approach and stand before him.

            Peter Byron was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years younger older than I, for I was but ten; large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities.  He gorged himself habitually at the table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks.  He ought now to have been at school; but his mama had taken him home for a month or two, “ on account of his delicate health.” Mr. Thomas, the master, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from home; but the mother’s heart turned from an opinion so harsh (as if that were harsh), and inclined rather for the more refined idea that Peter’s sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps to pining after home.

            Peter had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an antipathy to me.

He bullied and punished me; not two or three times a week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had regretted having his acquaintance, and every morsel of flesh on my bones shrank when he came near.  There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions; the servants did not like to offend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs. Byron was blind and deaf in matters that concerned her son.  She never saw him strike or hear him abuse me, though he did both now and then in her very presence; more frequently, however, behind her back.

            Habitually obedient to Peter, I came up to his chair: he spent some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could without damaging the roots: I knew he would soon strike, and while dreading the blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently deal it.  I wonder if he read that notion in my face; for, all at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and strongly.  I tottered, and regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair.

            “ That is for your impudence in answering mama awhile since,” said he, “ and for your sneaking way of getting behind the curtains, and for the look you had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat!”

            Accustomed to Peter Byron’s abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it; my care was how to endure the blow that would follow the insult.

            “ What were you doing behind the curtain?” he asked

            “ I was reading,”

            “ Shew the book.”

            I returned to the window and fetched it thence.

            “ You have no business to take our books; you are a dependant, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not live here with gentlemen’s children like us, and eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama’s expense.  Now, I’ll teach you to rummage my book-shelves: for they are mine; all the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years.  Go and stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows.”

            I did so, at first not aware of his intention; but when I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively started aside in alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it.  The cut bled, the pain was sharp; my terror passed its climax, but other feelings succeeded.

            “ Wicked and cruel boy!” I said.  “ You are like a murderer---you are like a slave-driver----you are like the Roman Emperors!”

           Being young with a flighty imagination I had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of Nero, Caligula, etc.  Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I never thought thus to have declared out aloud.

            “ What! What!” he cried.  “ Did you say that to me? Did you hear him, Mary and Viola? Won’t I tell mama? but first”---

            He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing.  I no longer feared him: I saw him as a tyrant, a murderer surprised at being attacked by his victim.  I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck, and was sensible of somewhat pungent sufferings: these sensations for the time predominated fear, and I received him in a frantic sort.  I don’t very well remember what I did with my hands, but he called me “ Rat! Rat!” and surprised me out of my stupor.  I had stricken him with the book, a fair payment in my eyes.  Mary and Viola ran toward Mrs. Byron, who had gone upstairs; she now came down upon the scene followed by Rita and her maid Archer.  We were parted: I having a thirst for vengeance, faintly hearing the words:----

            “ Dear! Dear! What a fury to fly at master Peter!”

            “ Did anybody ever see such a picture of passion!”

            Then Mrs. Byron subjoined----

            “ Take him away to the red room, and lock him in there.”  Four hands were immediately upon me and I was borne upstairs.

I RESISTED      all the way: a new thing for me, a circumstance that greatly strengthened the bad opinion Rita and Miss Archer were disposed to have from then onwards.  The fact is, I was a trifle, beside myself; or rather out of myself, as the French would say: I was conscious that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to severe penalties, and like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths.

            “ Hold his arms, Miss Archer: he’s like a wild beast.”

            “ For shame! for shame!” cried the lady’s maid.  “ What shocking conduct Mr. Fujimiya, to strike your benefactress son! Your young master.”

            “ Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?”

            “ No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing to earn your keep.  There, sit down, and think over your wickedness.”

            They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Byron, and had thrust me upon a stool: my impulse was to rise and flee but their hands caught me before I could do as such.

            “ If you don’t sit still, you must be tied down,” said Rita.  “ Miss Archer, lend me your garters; he would break mine easily.”

            Miss Archer turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature.  This preparation for bonds, an additional ignominy it inferred, took a little excitement out of me.

            “Don’t take them off,” I spoke quietly. “ I will not stir.”

            In guarantee thereof, I immediately fell silent.

            “ Mind you don’t,” said Rita; and when she had ascertained that I was really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Miss Archer stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as incredulous of my sanity.

            “ He never did so before,” at last said Rita, turning to Archer.

            “ But it was always in him,” was the reply.  “ I’ve told Missis often my opinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me.  He’s an underhand little thing: I never saw a boy his age with so much undercover.  And that hair…”

            “ You ought to be aware Master, that you are under obligation to Mrs. Byron: she keeps you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poor house.”

            I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very first recollections of existence in this house included hints as to my inferiority.  This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear; very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible.  Miss Archer joined in:---

            “ And you ought not to think yourself an equal with the Misses Byron and Master Byron, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them.  They will have a great deal of money as you will not: it is your place to be humble, and try to make yourself agreeable to them.”

“ Letting him beat me to the ground?” thought I.  “ I am not a dog.”

“ What we tell you is for your good,” added Rita, in no harsh voice: “ you should try to be useful and pleasant, then perhaps, you would have a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, Missis will send you away for sure.”

“ Besides,” said Miss Archer, “ God will punish him: he might strike him dead in the midst of his tantrums, and then where would he go? Come Rita, we will leave him: say your prayers, Master Fujimiya, when you are by yourself.  If you don’t repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away.”

They went, shutting the door, locking it behind them.

The red-room was a spare chamber very seldom slept in, I might say never, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary.  Yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion.  A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the center; the two large windows, with her blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour, with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany.  Out of these deep surroundings shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane.  Scarcely less prominent was an ample, cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.

This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because remote from the nursery and kitchens; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered.  The housemaid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and furniture a week’s quiet dust: and Mrs. Byron herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were store several parchments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret as to why this room was kept empty in spite of its grandeur. 

Mr. Byron had been dead five years: it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker’s man; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion. 

My seat, to which Rita and bitter Miss Archer had stationed me, was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before me; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, and to my left were the muffled windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty of bed and room.  I was no quite sure whether they had locked the door; but when I dared to get up; I was made sure.  Returning, I had to cross the looking-glass and stood riveted in morbid fascination at the little figure gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, red fiery hair and plum colored eyes.  I became fearful of moving for the vision had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp Rita’s stories represented as coming up out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travelers.  I returned to my stool.

Superstition was with me at the moment; but it was not yet her hour for complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.

All of Peter Byron’s violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference, all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well.  Why was I always suffering, always brow-beaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one’s favour? Mary, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected.  Viola, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged.  Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault.  Peter no one thwarted, much less punished; though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory: he called his mother “old girl” too; sometimes reviled her for her dark skin, similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still “her own darling.”  I dared commit no fault: I strove to fulfil every duty; and was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to night.

My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no one had reproved Peter for striking me; and because I turned against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded with general dislike. 

“ Unjust!-----unjust!” said my reason.  Instigated me into achieving escape from this oppression---as running away, or, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.  How all my brain was in tumult, that dreary afternoon, and all my heart in insurrection!  Yet in that darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle I fought.  I could not yet answer the question as to why I suffered thus. 

I was in discord in Gateshead Hall; I was like nobody there; I had nothing in harmony with Mrs. Byron or her children, or her chosen vassalage.  If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them.  They were not bound to regard with affection a thing which they did not sympathise.  A heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their interest.  I know that had I been sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child---though equally dependent and friendless---Mrs. Byron would have endured my presence more complacently; her children would have entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.

Daylight began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o’ clock, and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight.  I heard the rain still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall; I grew in degrees as cold as stone, and then my courage sank.  My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire.  All said I was wicked, and I might be so; what thought had I been but just conceiving of starving myself to death? That certainly was a crime: and was I fit to die?  Or was the vault at Gateshead Church and inviting bourne? In such a vault I had been told lied the silent remains of Mr. Byron.  I could scarcely remember him; but I knew he was my own uncle---my mother’s brother---that he had taken me when a parentless infant to his house; and that at his last moments he required a promise from Mrs. Byron that she would rear me and maintain me as one of her own children.  Mrs. Byron probably considered she had kept her promise; and so she had, I dare say, as well as her nature permitted her; but how could she really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with her, after her husband’s death, by any tie? It must have been irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her own family group. 

A singular notion dawned upon me.  I doubted not---never doubted had Mr. Byron been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls---I began to recall what I heard of dead men troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the living to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Byron’s spirit, harassed by the wrongs done to his sister’s child, might quit his abode----whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed---and rise before me in this chamber.  I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful least any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me with strange pity.  This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured to stifle it---I endeavoured to be firm.  Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room: at this moment a light gleamed on the wall.  Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight was still, and this stirred; while I gazed it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head.  I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern, carried by someone across the lawn: but then, my mind prepared as it was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift-darting beam was a herald of some coming vision of another world.  My heartbeat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed as the beating of wings: something near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort.  Steps came running along the outer passage; the key turned, Rita and Archer entered. 

“ Master Fujimiya, are you ill?” asked Rita

“ What a dreadful noise! It went quite through me!” exclaimed Archer.

I lay huddled in the middle of the room, rocking quietly on the balls of my feet in trying to succeed in calming my beating heart.  My hands were bunched up in my hair filling my vision with the colour of blood.

“ Take me out,” was my detached reply.

“ What for! Are you hurt! Have you seen something?” again demanded Rita.

“Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come.” I had now got a hold of Rita’s hand and she did not snatch it from me.

“ He had screamed out on purpose,” declared Archer, in some disgust.  “ And what a scream! If he had been in great pain one would have excused it, but he only wanted to bring us all here.  I know his naughty tricks.”

“ What is all this?” demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs. Reed came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling stormily.  “ Archer and Rita, I believe I gave orders that Ran Fujimiya should be left in the red-room till I came to her myself.”

“ Master Ran screamed so loud, ma’am,” pleaded Rita.

“ Let him go,” was the only answer.  “ Loose Rita’s hand, child: you cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured.  I abhor artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that tricks will not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer, and I will only liberated you in the condition of perfect stillness and submission.”

I quietly released Rita’s hand and retreated two steps in order to face my aunt.  She must have seen it in my eyes, the silent violence I felt towards her, because she suddenly added another hour to my punishment.  She did not care about the state of soul or whether it be snatched away from me in this room. I was an irksome child in her eyes.  A compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity.

Rita and Archer having retreated, Mrs. Byron impatient of my now stony glare, abruptly thrust me back and locked me in, without farther parley.  I heard her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone, I suppose I had a species of a fit: unconsciousness closed the scene.

Retour Chapitre 2